Hey guys,

I'm a newbie GM (had 4 games, 2 with my current group).
Playing with Shadowrun 2050 in the 4th edition, my players had a courier mission recently and have grown jealous of the cars of a gang they've seen (but not confronted).
One of them seems interested in trying to get a Car and/or a truck from a rich gang (Based on what I think could be a rival gang of the beginning of the Nova Rich if they were organized), another seems more interested in the disposable rocket launcher they had stuffed in that, while the third prefers bikers and their bikes.

Anyway, I have questions :
1) I am trying to figure what would be the differences between a lightly customized fast car (a), an heavily customized one (b), and the car of an illegal street racer © (contact of one of the players, might be met/raced for car mods later). The Toyota Elite has exactly the same stats as the Hyundai Shin-Hyung while I was thinking about using them as (a) and (b). The third car © would most likely be american, so I think I'll use this wiki and the stats of the Honda 3220 (similar to the Ford Mustang) in Used Car lot (worse handling, better acceleration : seems american ). Also on the same king of topic, how customized would be a gang Step-van Bulldog (this will be (d)) ? I was thinking extra armor (not concealed), a bit of passenger protection, some enging boosting (because it's used in conjonction with the custom cars), and ram plates (because what use is a 2+ tons truck if you can't use inertia) ?

2) As I think they'll try to steal one of the cars, I'd like to know how the gang can try to prevent that. The cars seem less traceable than in 2072, so what would happen if the characters get one of those in a safe-house and apply some paint ? I mean, the gang from which they are likely to steal would be known from workshops around Seattle so they may not get great help, but one of the characters know enough about mecanics and illegal racing to make use of a stolen car after all.

I think that all for now, folks

No idea on the extras and design options. I would just make something up. customized can also mean they have a new engine inside and whatnot...

As of point 2 I think:
Cars might have theft protection, electrocute when a break in attempt is prevented. Maybe I would simply run this like a maglock test, open the case, get around alarm break into lock. If it fails the car autolocks , enables anti theft measures and so on.
Maybe auto-nav to other location (?) if grid guided and autonav is enabled?
A bug could also be installed in the car.
A spirit / watcher could guard the car and inform the gang if something fishy is going on.
car could be locked in a secure place

Cars in SR really are pretty easy to steal. The thing that prevents most runners from just taking what they want is that whoever owns the thing might just come looking for it or send their big brother to get it back. Link your gang to some corporate interest or organized crime interest and see if the runners still want to steal the thing. Lifting a car from some random thrill gang is one thing. Lifting one from a gang working with (protected by) the Yakuza is another.
One issue you just have to face here is because of their skill sets, runners make excellent car thieves. They are used to getting around the best corporate security out there so a car alarm is little hindrance. Rather than going all out protecting the thing, make the consequences of stealing it outweigh any perceived benefits.

I re-read that part of the book, and it seems cool like that, thanks.

Also thanks for the answers, Mantis, it applies especially well here : my players are interested in cars from a gang with some nice connections, so I guess I could maybe "let" them (try to) steal, and have a favor to do in return, if they are not the most discreet about that

Cars are pretty easy to steal, but a bit harder to clean.

First you hacker has to disable the pilot/computer system, remove all old accounts, and change/spoof it a new ID. Remember if you just spoof the id, it will return to its original on next boot and the previous owner can just log in and request it's location. You have to do this somewhere other than your safe house, otherwise somebody can easily crack into the grid link system, and look up the cars ID and where it drove to.

You really don't want to drive it to your personal garage and then start to work on it just to have a bunch of gangers show up at your garage door after tracking it's movment and finding you.

You could do this on the road, but if they analyse the log they may see their ID disappear, and a new ID show up with no vechile with that ID having driven to that location being on record, then track your new ID.

Best to do it in either a busy place, ie hide in the clutter of the ids, or go somewhere away from gridlink and do it there.

Next you have to scan and remove all the RIFD tags which are everywhere, otherwise one of their contacts may one day call up the previous owner and say, you know that sweet ride with the leather seats in the back you lost; one of the two hundred tags in the leathers seats just went past a reader on 4th and Hazel.

Now you think you've got away clean, but while you were breaking into the car or working on its Comms, it was possibly scanning you with all its sensors and sending your images to a Dropbox, now every ganger in the orginasation which has a facial recognition program running in their vechile, or their comlink and eyes is constantly scanning and looking at everybody they drive/walk past; looking for emenies of the gang. So I hope you wore masks.

The 2050's are not quite that sophisticated yet, CoyoteNZ, as ubiquitous RFID's (and the tech to keep track of it all) have yet to become ubiquitous. But some of your points still stand.

You might want to have a look at this post, as this topic also came up a few years ago.

My solution was to create two new spells: Detect [RFID Tags] and Demolish [RFID Tags], which I then had the team's technomancer publish all over the matrix. Therefore, even if the public copies end up censored, the shadows will still have them readily available. Information Wants To Be Free in action. This way, even new characters can justify having access to these spells from character creation, on the grounds that they are both publicly known and freely available.