Bugatti Chiron Stolen: CEO Mate Rimac Chased Thief to Austria
A Bugatti Chiron stolen from the Bugatti Rimac campus near Zagreb on Wednesday, October 28, belonged to none other than Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac. The hypercar, with a base price of about 2.4 million euros ($2.7 million) according to AFP, was tracked live through its telemetry and recovered the same evening in Austria, while Rimac chased the thief himself in a Porsche 911.
Rimac told the story in a roughly six-minute Instagram video recorded in front of the recovered car. The short version: the key was inside, the campus has no fence, and a stranger simply walked up and drove away.
How Was the Bugatti Chiron Stolen?
Rimac said he has always left the keys inside his cars on campus, including the Chiron and the Rimac Nevera, because colleagues regularly need them for testing or moving the vehicles. “Instead of chasing me around because I’m in meetings all the time and busy, I just leave the key inside, and it worked fine until now,” he said, as quoted by NDTV.
Security camera footage shared by Rimac shows the man wandering around the site, checking the car and then driving off. Because many friends and coworkers use the Chiron, nobody noticed at first. The alarm only went up when someone told staff they had seen a stranger driving the car, and a group chat quickly confirmed that no one at the company had it.
Telemetry, a Group Chat and a Porsche 911
Rimac called the police right away. At the same time, the team pulled the Chiron’s live telemetry, which reports the car’s location, speed and fuel level. The data showed the car heading toward Slovenia, so Rimac jumped into his fully fueled Porsche 911 and set off after it, about one hour behind.
Friends who stayed with the police opened a group chat to share the car’s position, and Croatian, Slovenian and Austrian police joined the search. “I was hoping he would get caught before getting into the next country, but he made it to Austria,” Rimac said, according to The Drive. He added that the driver apparently put half a tank of fuel in the car at one stop and kept going.
According to Austrian police, quoted by Croatian outlet Moj Kraj and Austria’s Kleine Zeitung, the car crossed into Austria at the Spielfeld border crossing. Traffic officers found it shortly after 7 p.m. at a petrol station on the A9 Pyhrn motorway near Seiersberg, close to Graz, and arrested the 36-year-old Croatian man behind the wheel. One of the officers was in the group chat and had live location updates throughout.
What Happens to the Suspect?
Austrian police say the suspect admitted the theft during questioning. Investigators from the Styrian criminal office took over the case, and a criminal complaint will be filed on the order of the Graz public prosecutor while he remains free on bail. AFP reports the man told Rimac he had come to the company looking for a job and took the car after seeing the keys inside.
Rimac, who met the man at the police station, said he will not press charges himself because he felt sorry for him, but noted that the car’s value means prosecutors will pursue the case anyway. The Chiron suffered some damage and will be repaired.
Why This Theft Was Doomed From the Start
Rimac took over as Bugatti CEO when the Bugatti Rimac joint venture was formed with Porsche in 2021, and his team has full access to the data each car sends back. That made the theft close to pointless: a connected hypercar is one of the easiest vehicles in the world to track. For background on the brand’s ownership, see our report on Porsche selling Bugatti, and on the other side of the business, the Rimac Nevera R electric hypercar. We also covered the most expensive Bugatti ever made.
Rimac’s own lesson was simple. “We will not keep our keys around the factory anymore,” he said. “Don’t try it; we have all the data, and you can’t do anything with the car without us.”
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