Victorians are being tracked, followed and terrorised for their cars at astounding rates.

Melbourne man Chris believes would-be thieves placed a tracking device on his car while he was parked at a shopping centre in the city's inner east.

It wasn't until he arrived home that he received an alert on his mobile phone.

"I get out of the car and I see a notification come up my phone going 'this device is travelling with you'," Chris told A Current Affair.

"It goes press play audio, and I heard this noise come from my rear wheel of the car. I went, what's this?"

"I couldn't find anything. I pressed the button again. I just heard the noise... Luckily, my instinct got the better of me, and I just got straight out of the house, drove up to the police station," Chris explained.

Police officers eventually found a small black tracking device, similar to an Apple AirTag, under his Toyota Rav4 hybrid.

"Somebody had actually pulled away the mud guard at the back of the wheel and actually planted this tracker within there," Chris said.

It had tracked Chris from the shopping centre car park to his home and then to the police station, where he began to feel concerned.

"You go well, hang on. They could have been looking where I went. I stopped at home for a brief period of time. They might know where I am... Because you don't know what's going to happen after that, too," he said.

"Probably the most distressing part was my car's... a very generic passenger vehicle."

But according to Insurance Council of Australia chief executive Andrew Hall, Toyotas are hot property.

"We know that the most targeted car in Victoria is a Toyota," Hall said.

He's imploring Victorians to purchase a steering wheel lock to ward off potential car thieves.

"If you live in an area like Melbourne at the moment, a wise $25 investment in a club steering wheel lock would be very smart to save your car," Hall told A Current Affair.

Wheel locks have been flying off shelves in light of Melbourne's rising theft.

Autobarn stores in Victoria have experienced a 417 per cent increase in sales of the trusty device in just six months.

Staggering figures from the Insurance Council reveal the extent of the problem.

"On average, insurers receive a claim now every 44 minutes for a car that's either been stolen or damaged by attempted theft in Victoria," Hall said.

"Half a billion dollars worth of car theft every year does flow through to premium pricing."