Forget the rims, and never mind the stereo. Modern thieves looking for a serious payoff are skipping the obvious old staples and crawling underneath your car in search of the real prize: the catalytic converter. Standard issue on cars in this country since the mid-1970s, catalytic converters use a small amount of platinum to convert harmful engine emissions, including nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide, into less harmful ones, like nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Considering that platinum has, in recent weeks, made an understatement of its status as a precious metal by touching $2075 an ounce, and considering each catalytic converter contains between three and seven grams of the stuff, that little metal box under your car just became a whole lot more interesting to certain folks. This recent price spike is largely the result of fears of mine closures due to power cutbacks in South Africa, which controls some 80 percent of the world's platinum output, but it's hardly platinum alone that is seeing record prices. Palladium and rhodium, also used as catalysts, are running about $445 and $7300 an ounce, respectively. So what's the answer? An Ohio company's medieval-esque CatClamp is a ground-level tool to thwart thieves (who often get $200 or more for each stolen catalyst), but a lasting solution will have to come from the source. The world's automakers, which collectively spend more than $2 billion a year on platinum, are striving to find ways to curb their need. Mazda, for instance, has devised a catalytic converter that uses nano-particles of precious metals instead of larger particles to reduce the amount of such elements by 70 to 90 percent.

Sources: MSNBC, NanoScienceWorks.org, The BrinkTank Blog.