Vintage theft led to father's suicide

A grieving son has blamed his father's suicide on the thieves who stole his beloved vintage car four days earlier.

Glenn Johnstone said his dad Brian "lived and died" for the 1969 gold Ford Mustang Grande, taken from his Napier garage last December.

Brik Poipoi, 31, was sentenced to four years and three months in prison while his girlfriend Sarah McGeorge, 26, received a two-year sentence when they appeared before Napier District Court on Wednesday.

Johnstone said the pair broke the garage doors, disabled the alarms, smashed the windows, hotwired the car and drove off.

A neighbour heard the car start and ran outside chasing them down the driveway. Four days later Brian Johnstone, 58, had taken his own life.

His 33-year-old son, also a car enthusiast, said his dad had separated from his partner so the car had become his passion - he had spent more than $77,000 on maintenance.

Glenn said his dad was very anti-suicide and would "still be on this Earth today" had the car not been stolen.

Brian's youngest brother had committed suicide 21 years earlier and Glenn remembered his father questioning at a family function last November how he could have left his daughters.

While his father didn't leave a note, Glenn said he was pleased the court had revealed details of Poipoi's attempts to extort money from him.

The father of three said he didn't hate Poipoi or McGeorge because that would "eat me up inside", but he wanted them to understand what Brian's family had lost.

He and his brother acknowledge their father made the final decision "but I still argue the point that they contributed to his death in some way. Where he was found was where the car was normally parked."

Now Glenn has put the Mustang on the market.

"Every time I drive it, and I have only driven it three or four times, it just makes me upset ... every time."

He has a photo of his father in his garage and talks to him daily.

He misses him because "we were best mates and he ended up doing what he hated".