He said that "generally speaking", the seizure of the vehicles was not just from police patrolling, and in relation to the street-racing type of activities, it was "more common" that a complaint had been made and followed up by police.
"The message is clear," he said. "The public do not endorse poor behaviour on our roads, it is unsafe and it makes others feel unsafe. Police purpose is to ensure everybody can be safe and feel safe, and we will act to achieve this purpose."
Current details on the numbers of vehicles destroyed under legislation targeting boy-racers and enacted when Collins was Minister of Police in the first year of the Government of 2008-2016 under Prime Minister John Key were not available by Friday.
But, in contrast to some forecasts that up to 10 vehicles would be confiscated and destroyed each year, it was reported in 2017 that the first destruction had taken place in 2012 and in the first eight years there had been just three, with none in Hawke's Bay.
Under the Sentencing Act, a court must confiscate a vehicle and order it to be destroyed if the driver has been convicted of three street-racing or wheel-spin offences committed within four years.
But a judge can consider "extreme hardship" or "undue" hardship to another person before deciding whether to make the order condemning the vehicle to the scrap-heap.
The experts are ready and waiting, with some experience. In late April about 50 vehicle bodies had been removed and crushed in a Wairoa District Council project to rid its area of abandoned vehicles and other illegal dumping.