Bugatti CEO Always Left the Keys in His Seven-Figure Chiron. But Not After Today
Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac had a habit of leaving his cars parked with the keys in them—including multi-million-dollar luxury missiles like the Bugatti Chiron. Honestly, I get it—stealing something that valuable is such a major crime that most opportunistic thieves wouldn’t dare, even if it looked like “easy pickings.” And yet, turns out, the temptation was just too strong for somebody who made off wth Rimac’s car recently.
I was skeptical about Instagram allowing long-form vertical videos until this morning, when I watched Mr. Rimac tell the whole story about his Chiron going on a little unscheduled adventure from its parking spot at a Bugatti building in Croatia.
Here’s the clip:
It’s quite engrossing to hear Mr. Rimac tell the story himself. But if you don’t have six minutes or don’t want to deal with Instagram, basically what happened was that the car was parked at a company building, an employee clocked it speeding off, a group chat of Bugatti people quickly deduced that, no, nobody knew the guy in the car, and police were dispatched to intercept the vehicle.
Rimac himself hopped into a Porsche 911 in pursuit, ultimately catching up to the Chiron where Austrian police had stopped it
“I immediately called the police, and they arrived fast. At the same time, we were checking the telemetry data, which sends the location, fuel level, speed, and everything else. I saw the car heading towards Slovenia. A few of my friends stayed with the police, and we opened a group chat to send all the information. I was right next to my 911, which was full of fuel, and went full throttle chasing after him because he had a one-hour head start,” Rimac says.
“I was hoping he would get caught before getting into the next country, but he made it to Austria. As he was running out of fuel, we were hoping he would be caught at the gas station, but he continued. I guess he didn’t pay for the fuel; he just filled up half the tank and continued onwards. Eventually, the Austrian police did a fantastic job. One of the officers was in our group chat, had an update on the location all the time, and they caught him.”
Ultimately, Rimac says he declined to press charges, feeling bad for the Croatian car thief. But since the car was worth so much money, he’s still going to be in a lot of trouble with the law.
“We will not keep our keys around the factory anymore. That’s the story of the stolen Chiron. Don’t try it; we have all the data, and you can’t do anything with the car without us.”
The Chiron really is quite a car. (Cars in these pics are not the exact one that was stolen—that’s in the background in the video.) Bugatti
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