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Car thieves stole a £183,000 Range Rover that thedealership it was bought from apparently described as ‘unstealable’.
John, 45, collected the Range Rover 2024 SV Edition One from the dealership in Coventry on December 14 last year and drove it back to his home in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.
The limited edition vehicle (only 550 were released in the UK) boasted £10,000 graphite wheels and seats that can massage you or pulse in time with music, among other high-tech features.
Less than 60 hours later the car was stolen in the middle of the night by a group of thieves, reports the MailOnline.
CCTV footage shows a car drop off three men at the top of John’s street shortly before 1am.
Two men then walk towards the Range Rover, while another stands as a watch-out on the other side of the road.
It’s not clear how the men get into the vehicle but they soon gain access, and begin working on the car to get it started.
Before long the engine starts and the trio drive off. The whole thing takes about 15 minutes.
John woke up at 3am to several missed calls from the car’s tracking company, and looked out of the window to see his vehicle had gone.
He called the tracking company but by then the tracker had been turned off, before reporting the crime to police.
John said the theft was particularly surprising because the salesperson at the dealership had told him the car was effectively ‘unstealable’ because of a new Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) security upgrade.
John told the MailOnline he asked about having a Ghost Immobiliser fitted, which requires the driver to enter a unique code before the car becomes driveable, but was told it wasn’t needed because the upgrade meant’no one’s taking this car’.
He said: ‘I felt safe with this knowledge, I had just paid £183,000 for a car made by JLR and the staff were confident that they had now made these cars safe and unstealable.’
John said the fact the ‘getaway driver’ drove away after dropping them off suggests the thieves were very confident they could steal the Range Rover.
He still isn’t sure how they managed to get inside the car. A common tactic used by thieves is to capture the signal of a car key and trick the car into thinking it is nearby.
Criminals only need to be within a few metres of a car key to capture the signal, but John said the thieves didn’t get close enough to his home for this.
‘They did not come near to the house with a scanning device to get a key signal, whatever they did was more sophisticated than this, they didn’t need one,’ he said.
John has complained to JLR, saying that the theft demonstrated a ‘catastrophic failure of the security system advertised as state-of-the-art’.
In response, Jaguar Land Rover Client Relationship Centre said it had implemented theft mitigation schemes to help reduce risk, but that these systems cannot solely be relied on.
It said vehicle theft is a risk all owners face and it would not consider reviewing any claims of responsibility.
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The letter suggested John contact The Motor Ombudsman if unhappy with the firm’s response.
The theft of John’s Range Rover is the latest in a spate of similar crimes.
According to theAssociation of Auto Theft Investigators (IAATI) luxury vehicles are stolen to order by criminal networks in the UK, before being shipped to destinations that include the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe.
UK vehicles are particularly popular in certain countries because the cars are often of higher quality than those sold locally.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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