Get to know price of bulletproof for your car in SA, data from vehicle tracking cluster, Tracker, shows that South African hijacking are getting more and more violent.

According to Tracker’s records, over the past year, a mean of eighteen customers a month experienced physical injury throughout a hijacking, through being shot, injured or abused. One in 10 of those incidents proven fatal, the cluster said.

“Criminals are more and more taking hostages throughout hijackings and tracker has noted that on the average that 27 of our activations result in a hostage being taken,” it said.

Speaking to BusinessTech, Grant Anderson MD of Armormax – a  manufacturer of civilian armoured vehicles – pointed to a gentle upward mechanical phenomenon in sales for armoured vehicles within the country.

“This has been driven to an outsized extent by the continuing level of violent crime rife in our society.”

“We have saved nineteen lives that we tend to are alert to, in attacks on our vehicles in SA. the bulk of those in hijackings wherever the attacker force the trigger that could be a scary statistic on condition that we tend to are a custom manufacturer of luxury armoured vehicles and don’t have thousands of vehicles on the road.”


Protection



Armormax has de-escalated the many us and European standards for flight levels and settled on Level B4 (protection against high supercharged handgun rounds) and Level B6 ( Protection against the first common assault rifles found in SA just like the R4/5, AK 47 and R1/FN) for the South African market.

“Most hijackings are still committed with handguns as they're simple to hide, and for this level of threat a B4 is good,” Anderson aforementioned.

“Regarding prices, we tend to don’t differentiate between vehicle models, however by ballistic levels.

“Our base level B4 build starts at R550,000 and our B6 at R1,500,000 (compared with a mean value of in way over R10 million for level B6 from one amongst the OEM makers.)

“Our vehicles are amongst the lightest armoured vehicles found globally, with a mean intercalary weight of 180 kgs on a B4, and 500Kgs for a B6 (compared to 1800 kgs on a number of the OEM builds).”

According to Armormax’s web site level, the B4 upgrade can see engineers armour crucial areas of the traveller cabin.

“We replace all the glass with trajectory glass, integrate armour into the four doors, A.B and C pillars still because the rear seats or boot divider, therefore providing around 90th of the protection for plenty but the price of a manufacturer B4 level armoured vehicle,” it said.

“As a consumer, you'll be able to choose to armour any further areas you're feeling are necessary on your vehicle (e.g. the roof in a very sedan).

“When we tend to armour a vehicle to level B6 we tend to produce an entire cocoon, as well as the floor, roof, firewalls, engine bay protection etc.”


Common models

According to Anderson, these are the vehicles most commonly armoured.
  • Land Rover: Range Rover Vogue, Range Rover Sport,  Land Rover Discovery, Land Rover Defender
  • Toyota / Lexus: Toyota Land Cruiser 200,/ Lexus LX 570, Lexus LS,  Land Cruiser 78/79, Lexus GS, Prado, Hilux D/Cab,
  • VW: Touareg, Amarok, Caravelle, Gti
  • Volvo: XC 90, S 80
  • BMW: Three Series, Five Series, Seven Series,X5,X6
  • Audi: Q7, A8, A6, A4
  • Mercedes: S Class, E class, C class, Vito, ML, GL , G Wagon
  • Chrysler: Jeep Cherokee and derivatives
  • Infiniti: FX, QX
  • Nissan: Patrol, Navara
  • Porsche: Cayenne
  • Mitsubishi: Pajero