"Stolen Car" is a song written and performed by Bruce Springsteen. It was originally released on his fifth album, The River. The version released on The River was recorded at The Power Station in New York in January 1980. An alternative version recorded in July 1979 was released on Tracks in 1998.

"Stolen Car" was written quickly and first recorded the day after "Hungry Heart. Music critic Clinton Heylin has suggested that it may have begun as a continuation of that song, as "Stolen Car" originally used similar language to explain the marriage failure: "We got married and promised never to part/Then I feel a victim to a hungry heart." "Stolen Car," along with a few other songs on The River including the title track and "Wreck on the Highway", mark a new direction in Bruce Springsteen's songwriting. These ballads, imbued with a sense of hopelessness, foreshadow his next album, Nebraska. Like "The River", "Stolen Car" is an inner-directed, psychological song that deals with a failing marriage. The protagonist of "Stolen Car" is driven by his loneliness to car theft, hoping to get caught but fearing to just disappear. Essentially, he wants to get arrested just to prove he exists. Author June Skinner Sawyers describes the theme of the song to be "the struggle to create meaning for oneself." She notes that it "just tells a story, honestly and simply, offering one of Springsteen's most precise lyrics." Patrick Humphries describes the effect as being similar to the Robert Mitchum film noir Build My Gallows High.

The recording uses minimal backing, with soft piano and synthesizer punctuated by tympani-like drums. Springsteen's biographer Dave Marsh wrote that the recording fades away "without a nuance of reluctance. There is nothing more here—just a waste of life and a man brave or stupid enough to watch it trickle away." Bruce Springsteen himself has noted that "Stolen Car" is one of the songs reflecting a shift in his songwriting style, linking The River to Nebraska. He noted that the protagonist "felt disconnected and felt that he was fading away, disappearing, felt invisible," just like Springsteen himself felt invisible while he was growing up. He has also stated that the protagonist was the character whose progress he would be following on the Tunnel of Love album, and that he served as the archetype for the male role in future songs Springsteen wrote about men and women. Springsteen would also develop themes from "Stolen Car" on other future songs, including "State Trooper" and "Highway Patrolman" from his 1982 Nebraska album and "Downbound Train" from his 1984 Born in the U.S.A. album.

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