To be theft the intention has to be “to permanently deprive the owner”. As that was not his intention that is why the charges of stealing had to be dropped.

In the days when only the wealthy owned cars and a chauffeur to go with it, there arose the problem of said chauffeur ‘borrowing’ the car to impress the girlfriend by taking her for a ‘joyride’. They could not charge the chauffeur with stealing the car so they tried charging them with stealing the petrol and such like. This was not really satisfactory so a new crime was invented – taking a vehicle without the owners consent.

I wonder if they would have gone to all the trouble if the problem had been poor peoples’ bicycles being ‘borrowed’?