A CAR thief ran off when the owner of the vehicle he was about to steal got into the car naked.

Russell Stuart, 51, was woken when he heard his Peugeot car being revved up on his driveway in the early hours, UK's The Daily Telegraph reported.

Mr Stuart ran outside, opened the passenger door and sat beside the thief - not realising he had forgotten to get dressed.

As soon as the thief saw Stuart, he flung the door open and made a run for it. “I just got out of bed and ran to my car, opened the passenger door and sat down,” said Mr Stuart, of Kent, southeastern England.



“I said to him, 'all right mate, where are we going then?' And he jumped out of the car and legged it. I don’t know what the guy must have thought when a large naked bloke got into the car next to him, but when your car is being stolen you don’t think about it, you just react.”

Mr Stuart drove around the town looking for the thief but, still naked, gave up after a while in case he got pulled over for indecent exposure.