This is the moment a brazen thief casually approached an £80,000 car and stole it – in just 23 seconds.

The Range Rover Autobiography was stolen on August 28 in Hampstead, North London.

Owner David Conway recorded the incident on his home CCTV camera - showing the thief nonchalantly strolling up to the vehicle, before making his getaway.

The theft is just one of many in the area recently – part of an ongoing steal-to-order campaign organised by sophisticated criminals.

Approach: The thief can be seen walking towards the car in the top of the picture

Professional thieves buy £30 devices that allow them to copy the car's unique electronic key code when the owner uses it before going back to steal the vehicle.

Alternatively, they can buy devices that unscramble the car's code on the spot by tuning in to the digital frequency and rapidly sifting thousands of combinations in seconds.

The car's expensive tracking system often only kicks in if it is driven away without the key code being cracked, or if the car is raised off the ground to be towed or put on the back of a transporter.

Mr Conway said: 'Because these devices allow the thieves to effectively break the code. The tracker thinks a key is being used.

'Mine only kicked in some 40 minutes after the car was stolen, by which time it was probably well on the way to Eastern Europe.'

Once the Autobiography has been unlocked by the digital key, it starts at the touch of a button.

Entry: The man casually gets into the Range Rover using a £30 device that copies the car's unique electronic key code

He added: 'You can see on the footage how the thief turns the engine on and off, then on again – that's because the only way he can be sure his code has overruled the software is to restart the car.

'If he hadn't needed to do that, he could have driven it away even more quickly.'

Police informed Mr Conway that around 30 Range Rovers had been stolen in his neighbourhood over the last 12 nights.

When Mr Conway contacted Range Rover to ask about the way his car was stolen, he was told: 'We are unable to speculate on the circumstances and would advise you to continue to seek assistance through the police and your insurers. Thank you.'

In response, Mr Conway, who complained through A Spokesman Said, added: 'To me, that is simply not good enough.

'These days cars are supposed to be incredibly hard to steal without their specific key. Insurers will investigate any claim for theft exceeding £20,000.

'Luckily, in my case, I have both sets of keys for the car and there is the CCTV footage.

Ready to go: Police informed Mr Conway that around 30 Range Rovers had been stolen in his neighbourhood over the last 12 nights

'But I will be pursuing this with Range Rover because they must be aware of this weakness and they don't appear to be interested in talking to me about what they are doing to tackle it.'

A Spokesman Said commented: 'This isn't good enough and something needs to be done to protect people who have worked hard to have these expensive cars.

'Thieves should not be able to simply steal a car of that value and that calibre so easily, Jaguar Range Rover need to act fast before it happens again and again.'

The Metropolitan Police says 24,000 cars were stolen in the capital last year, 6,000 taken without their owners' keys – and over 70% of these were Range Rovers and BMWs.

Data from the motor insurance research centre, Thatcham Research, show that between January and July 2014, nearly 300 Range Rover Evoques and Sports were stolen in London, along with 63 BMW X5s and Series 3 models.