chop shop

See also: chopshop and chop-shop

English

Alternative forms

• chop-shop

Noun

chop shop (plural chop shops)

1. (US) A facility where stolen motor vehicles are disassembled in order to sell their mechanical parts.

   Apparently his stolen car had been taken to a chop shop, as the police only recovered the frame.

   • 1979, “The Car-Theft Boom”, in Newsweek‎^[1], page 100:

     Once the car is in a chop shop, a skilled cutter can reduce it to salable parts in half an hour to 45 minutes.

   • 1987 August, Ed Heney, “Outsmart the Car Thieves”, in Kiplinger's Personal Finance‎^[2], page 32:

     New York City sports a number of chop shops, as do Chicago, Detroit and most other large metropolitan areas. […] If they can′t find the right engine, the junkyard may call a chop shop contact to get someone on the street looking for the right make and year.

   • 2009, Taylor Joseph, Allison Investigates‎^[3], Four Star Publishing, page 94:

     “A chop shop disassembles the entire car, so they need a location that is secluded, like a warehouse or a vacant factory — although today′s forfeiture laws tend to discourage chop shops.”

See also

• fence
• receiver
• thief

Verb

chop shop (third-person singular simple present chop shops, present participle chop shopping, simple past and past participle chop shopped)

1. Alternative form of chop-shop
   • 1961, American Jurisprudence Proof of Facts, Annotated‎^[4], Bancroft-Whitney Company:

     Seller of used car, who had fraudulently represented to buyer that the vehicle identification number (VIN) had been scratched out under windshield because former owner had been trying to prevent repossession of the car, was liable to buyer for punitive damages, based on having acted willfully or with reckless disregard for the consequences of the seller's conduct, even if the seller had not known the car had been "chop shopped" from two different vehicles.

   • 1995, William F. Roemer Jr., Accardo: The Genuine Godfather‎^[5], page 305:

     A new income, from "chop shopping," the dismantling of stolen cars and the subsequent sale of their parts, was adding to the coffers but was no panacea.