No steering lock?

[Alvon Elrod]

Surprised to see that my Prima #18 has no steering lock, i.e. with the key removed from the ignition.  I haven't seen a car without steering lock since the '60's.  Is that something new with cars these days?  (or is mine defective --  I don't think defective, but that's just the way it was designed).

[ciddyguy]

Alvon Elrod wrote

Surprised to see that my Prima #18 has no steering lock, i.e. with the key removed from the ignition.  I haven't seen a car without steering lock since the '60's.  Is that something new with cars these days?  (or is mine defective --  I don't think defective, but that's just the way it was designed).

I can't say one way or the other as I've not noticed nor tried this when I test drove the Fiat. It may be that once you lock the car, the wheel locks as well, but remains unlocked until that point.

Much of what's in cars today, such as the shift interlock for the automatic are now often done by servo's and in some cars, won't release the shifter (or the wheel for that matter) until you do several procedural steps to ensure you ARE the correct owner, using your key/fob in the ignition lock by making you turn it to the ON position, pressing on the brake etc. This is especially true if your car (say the 2009 or later big Ram trucks) has remote starting and thus require that you do certain things with your key and such before you can drive off because when you remote start the truck, everything remains locked down tight and the doors locked until you enter the vehicle.

[ciddyguy]

Alvon Elrod wrote

Surprised to see that my Prima #18 has no steering lock, i.e. with the key removed from the ignition.  I haven't seen a car without steering lock since the '60's.  Is that something new with cars these days?  (or is mine defective --  I don't think defective, but that's just the way it was designed).

Alvon,

I did check this out yesterday when pouring over the demo and no, no steering lock as I had thought. The specifications here in the US are if you have enough other systems disabled, no need to lock the wheel and the Sentry Key Immobilizer System (SKIS) system used in the Fiat is the same as the system used in many other ChryCo models and was deemed good enough by NHTSA to avoid having to participate the Fiat in the parts marking requirements.

And According to Thathcam in England, a good immobilizer will either disable the ignition etc or something mechanical in the driving system, such as locking the steering wheel but not necessarily both.

[Giallo Edizione]

None of our 4 family cars have steering column locks. I haven't thought about that till it got raised here and looked at all the cars. They are 2006 and 2007's plus the 500.