A nine-year-old boy had an axe held to his neck by robbers who demanded his family hand over their high-performance cars, his father said.
Rajinder Auluk, 40, said his son no longer wanted to live in the house and feared the men would return to kill him and his family.
Police have appealed for help to catch the thieves, who raided the Auluks' home in Great Barr, West Midlands, at around 8pm on Monday. The men demanded car keys and cash as they threatened Auluk's youngest child and his wife, Baljit, 45, and their other son, Jay, 16.
Auluk, a property developer, said: "We had just finished eating when my nine-year-old son went into the front room to get ready to watch wrestling on the TV.
"I heard a loud crash at the front door and suddenly an explosion hit me in the face as these men with axes and sledgehammers came piling through the door.
"I said, 'Take what you want,' but they carried on shouting and held an axe to my youngest's neck. It was true panic. I was angry and frightened, but my main concern was what they were going to do to the little guy. I thought he was going to cut him."
The men tried to get away in both family cars – a high-performance Nissan Pulsar GTR and a Mercedes CLK, but abandoned the latter vehicle on the road outside the home.
Leading the inquiry, Detective Constable Derek Cole, of West Midlands police, said: "This was a truly horrendous ordeal for the family … The thieves knew exactly what they were after; they wanted the family's high performance car and didn't care who they harmed in the process.
"They had complete disregard for the victims."
Anyone with information should call Force CID in Harborne on 101 or the independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.