chop shop

See also: chopshop and chop-shop

English

Alternative forms

Noun

chop shop (plural chop shops)

  1. (US) A facility where stolen motor vehicles are disassembled in order to sell the mechanical parts.
    Apparently his stolen car had been taken to a chop shop, as the police only recovered the frame.
    • 1979, Newsweek, The Car-Theft Boom‎, 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, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, 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, 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
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