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Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesA Bentley is shown in this file photo.

PARSIPPANY — On the road to crime, these crooks drove Bentleys.

And their timing? Impeccable.

It all started when the employees at Paul Miller Bentley went into their nightly routine of starting up the super cars parked in front of the Parsippany dealership.

One at a time, like clockwork, the ultra-luxury vehicles — some worth a quarter-million dollars — are moved into a "secure pen" behind the building on Route 46. In the morning, the cars are pulled out again.

But the process, meant to guard against theft, had the opposite effect Saturday: In mere moments, two running Bentleys were stolen from the dealership. An employee and two customers could do nothing but watch, authorities and the store manager said today.

"They were gone in 60 seconds, pretty much," manager Hayes Miller said.

It was around 5 p.m., minutes before closing, when the heist went down. As a worker prepared to move the cars, torrential rain began to fall. With the cars still running, the employee ran inside for an umbrella. As other workers tried to mop up water that was flooding the showroom, the bandits made their move.

Video surveillance showed a red BMW X5 — another stolen car — pull in front of the dealership and two men, one wearing a red hoodie, jumped out, Miller and police said. The men each got into a Bentley and all three vehicles sped off.

They ripped along Route 46 West, made a U-turn at Arlington Plaza and headed back east. Then they vanished.

The Bentleys, both 2013 Continentals, are worth a total $403,927. Celebrity-heiress Paris Hilton is fond of the car. So is NBA star Kobe Bryant.

One car was a GT V8, the other a GTC W12, Miller said. The latter is a convertible with a top speed of 195 mph. It can go from zero to 60 in 4.5 seconds, its manufacturer boasts.

Miller suspects the thieves learned the nightly storage routine by watching the dealership and, in hindsight, recalls seeing people "wandering around the lot, not really looking at cars, just kind of casing the place." Now his security policies are changing.

"The idea that we’d be robbed during business hours — until Saturday, that was unthinkable," Miller said. "We will now prepare for theft not only at night, but during the day as well."

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