Amanbir Singh Grewal stole luxury cars on test drives to help ‘project image’, court hears

A thief who stole two luxury cars from separate Adelaide dealerships under the guise of taking them for a test drive – never to return – has learned his fate.

A thief who stole two luxury cars, including a $160,000 Land Rover Defender, from separate Adelaide dealerships under the guise of taking them for a test drive – never to return.

A thief who stole two luxury cars from separate Adelaide dealerships under the guise of taking them for a test drive – never to return – also arranged for a stranger’s car to be towed to a wrecking yard, a court has heard.

Amanbir Singh Grewal, 27, was in the grips of a methamphetamine addiction and trying to portray an air of affluence when he committed the offences.

He has pleaded guilty to seven counts of theft for a range of incidents in 2021 and 2022.

In sentencing in the District Court, Judge Paul Muscat said Grewal was a “very deceitful person” who “went from a decent and respectable young man to rock bottom very rapidly”.

He said that in June last year Grewal had arranged to test-drive a $160,000 Land Rover Defender from a Hawthorn car dealership, telling the salesman he planned to take the car to the freeway and would be “back soon”.

He never returned but police later recovered the car.

About a month later, Grewal attended at a Medindie dealership and took a $70,000 BMW X5 for a test drive.

“You drove out of the dealership in the BMW and like you did with the Land Rover, never returned the car to the dealership,” Judge Muscat said.

That car was never recovered.

A BMW X5 was never recovered.

Judge Muscat said Grewal’s offences also included selling a MG SUV for $15,550 that he leased after responding to a Gumtree ad in May 2022. In the same month, he withdrew $1800 from an acquaintances bank account without permission.

He also stole items he was tasked to deliver – including a $1975 gearbox and $6700 mechanical shift – while working as a courier.

Judge Muscat said Grewal was on bail at the time some of the offences occurred, after an earlier series of offences which included the sale of a stranger’s car that was parked outside Modbury Hospital to a wrecking yard for $900.

He had also sold a hire car rented from Adelaide Airport to a car yard at Prospect for $18,000.

Judge Muscat said Grewal had taken out several credit cards in 2020, and bought items he “probably should not have, such as expensive personal accessories and jewellery” before winding up unemployed, in debt and addicted to drugs.

“Your offending occurred against that background and in the context of having to pay off your financial debts, to purchase drugs to use and to continue to project the image of yourself that you had created and wished to maintain.”

Judge Muscat imposed a jail term of four years, extending his Grewal’s existing 12-month jail term to five years with a non-parole period of two and a half years.

“You acknowledge that you were caught up in projecting a social image of yourself as being a wealthy and affluent person,” he said.