West Bathurst resident Nigel Simmons thought the location was the ideal place to show off his white EA Ford Falcon.

But he’s not so sure now after finding the vehicle badly vandalised and virtually worthless when he checked on it on Thursday morning.

“Someone’s tried to steal it. You can tell they’ve attempted to hotwire the ignition,” Nigel said. “But I reckon when they couldn’t get the car going they decided to trash it.

“And boy, they didn’t miss much. Just about all the windows have been smashed and the dashboard’s a mess.”

Nigel said the car had been parked on Hereford Street with numerous other vehicles for the past few weeks.

“I’d received a few phone calls, but nothing concrete,” he said. “I wanted to sell the car so I could get enough money to buy dad’s car off him. Now I don’t have any car at all. I am gutted.

“There’s just too much vandalism happening in the city these days. I guess Bathurst isn’t the place it used to be.”

Nigel said he’d been checking on the car every two days and parked it on Hereford Street because it seemed a popular location to sell it due to the large volume of passing traffic. 

“It’s the first time I’d tried something like this and it will be the last,” he said. 

“I would warn other people to be really careful because the same thing could happen to them.”