A man who noticed his Mercedes-Benz worth £55,000 was stolen from his driveway had the valuable car recovered in under five hours.

Alpesh Patel immediately alerted Tracker, a stolen vehicle recovery service, when his Mercedes-Benz S500 AMG was stolen from his Harrow driveway.

A Tracker device was already installed on Mr Patel’s car, and it led Essex police officers to an illegal chop shop in Romford that contained 14 stolen cars worth a total of around £600,000.

Officers arrested two men at the chop shop.

Mr Patel said: “Of course when I left the house for work, I was very confused as I knew I had parked the car on my driveway the night before.

“After getting over the initial shock it was gone, I checked my neighbour’s CCTV, and it confirmed that my car was stolen at 2am in just a few minutes by thieves exploiting my car’s keyless entry system.

“Thankfully, when I purchased the car, it already had a Tracker unit fitted, to which I had subscribed, so I immediately contacted Tracker who in turn, alerted the police.

“I was amazed my car was found so quickly. I was so relieved to have it returned without any damage, as I use my car to commute to work so it would have been very inconvenient had it been found stripped of parts or not found at all.”

Clive Wain, the head of police liaison at Tracker, explained that the 14 cars recovered at the chop shop were all in different stages of being stripped for parts.

He added that such chop shops are common in Essex, as stripped parts can be valuable and criminal gangs have easy access to shipping ports in the county.