There is a small section of your exhaust pipe that fetches a very high price in the scrap metal world. In petrol driven vehicles this part is called a catalytic convertor (cat), in diesels the part is a diesel particular filter (DPF).
the metals inside these components are used to filter the exhausts coming out of the car and reduce the emissions coming from a motor vehicle. These metals are vey expensive.
So much so that in recent times thieves have began targeting these sections of exhaust pipe as they are relatively easy to remove from a car and do not require access to the vehicle to steal them. Usually only the size of a small muffler, they can be removed by sliding underneath a vehicle when it is parked and cutting the part out of the car. The owner is none the wise until when you start your car in the morning and it sounds like a tractor.
This is such a huge problem in the United States that things called cat cages have become a high selling product to prevent this. We are seeing some thefts in Australia but not to the same extremes.
Recently in Oregon Police arrested a group of men with 3000 stolen catalytic converters with an estimated value of $22 million USD.
