A STOLEN £7,000 car and a massive safe that had £1,500 inside have been recovered – thanks to the Dorset Echo.

Carol and Barry Newton were at home reading the Echo’s front page story on Saturday about the limited edition Subaru Impreza stolen from Dowsett Motors in Weymouth and realised it was parked in their road in Milborne St Andrew.

They took the Echo outside to check the vehicle against the picture of the stolen car and found the registration number matched and noticed the quarter of a tonne safe was still on the back seat.

The couple alerted staff at Dowsett Motors who alerted police.

Mr Newton, 55, said: “If the picture hadn’t been in the paper I don’t think anybody would’ve taken any notice.

“You wouldn’t have thought to yourself that it was a stolen car.”

Mr Newton first saw the car on Friday at 8am – less than three hours after it was stolen - but thought nothing of it because other villagers often park their cars close to the Milborne St Andrew First School in his road, Bladen View.

And the couple thought it might belong to a member of a local Subaru owners’ club.

But when Mrs Newton came back from the village Londis shop with the Echo on Saturday morning they realised it was stolen from the garage, which is almost 20 miles away from where they live.

Mr Newton said: “I saw it again on Friday night and said to Carol that it was still there but didn’t think anything of it.

“It was not until she came back with the Echo and I read it and thought: ‘It can’t be.’ “But I walked over the road to make sure and saw the registration and saw the safe on the back seat and thought: ‘It’s got to be the one.’”

The Wyke Regis family business owner Nigel Dowsett put up a £2,000 reward for information leading to a conviction after staff arrived for work on Friday morning to find the doors of the garage had been forced.

Thieves damaged and moved the office counter to make room to drag the safe through the workshop and were caught on CCTV driving it away in the Subaru after also taking the car keys from the office.

Mrs Newton, 46, was delighted she and her husband could help.

She said: “As long as they’ve found it that’s the main thing.”

The pair blocked the stolen car in with Mr Newton’s Ford Mondeo and Mrs Newton’s Vauxhall Vectra in case the thieves came back and called Dowsett Motors after getting the number from a car advert at the back of the paper.

A recovery vehicle was then sent out by police so the car could be forensically checked for evidence.