Bugatti’s chief executive had his Chiron stolen on Wednesday, October 28. The key was inside. When Mate Rimac found out, he called the police, opened the hypercar’s live data feed and went after it in his Porsche 911.
By then, the stolen Chiron had roughly an hour’s head start. It crossed Slovenia and made it into Austria before highway police found it that evening at a gas station south of Graz and arrested the driver.
Rimac got his car back, with some damage. He also met the man who took it, and came away sounding more sympathetic than angry.
“The guy just walked in and drove off,” Rimac said in a video describing the theft (translated from Croatian, as reported by N1).
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How Mate Rimac’s Bugatti Chiron Was Stolen
Rimac, 38, founded Rimac Automobili in 2009 and now runs Bugatti Rimac, the company behind both brands. His Chiron is the quad-turbo W16 hypercar whose base price, AFP reported, is €2.4 million (about $2.7 million). Austrian police put the stolen car’s value at roughly €3 million, or more than $3 million.
The key was no accident. Rimac said he had left keys in his cars for years, the Chiron and his Rimac Nevera included, so colleagues could move or test them without hunting him down between meetings. Croatia, he said, is so safe that the habit felt natural, something he noted tends to surprise people who live in the US.
The theft happened at the Rimac Campus in Sveta Nedelja, just west of Zagreb. Rimac said the grounds are open; Croatia Week reported that the factory building itself requires an access card. The Chiron was parked outside.
At first, nobody noticed. Friends and colleagues regularly drive the car, and Rimac said he often doesn’t know where it is. The alarm came when someone reported seeing an unfamiliar person at the wheel. Staff checked in a group chat whether anyone had authorized the drive. No one had.
Rimac later posted campus security footage. As Motor1 described it, the man wanders the site and smokes a cigarette before finding the car with its key inside, then simply drives away.
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The Pursuit From Croatia to Austria
Rimac called the police immediately. His team brought up the Chiron’s telemetry, and the data showed the car heading toward Slovenia. A few of Rimac’s friends stayed with officers and relayed the car’s location and other data through the group chat.
Rimac was standing next to his Porsche 911, which he noted had a full tank. He went after the Chiron. He has not said which 911 it was, and none of the accounts describe him catching sight of the Bugatti on the road.
The choice of car carried a small irony. Until September 9, Porsche owned 45 percent of Bugatti Rimac. It has since sold that stake to an investor group led by HOF Capital.
Rimac hoped police would stop the Chiron before the next border; he said he had expected the crossing to be closed. It wasn’t. According to Austrian police, the driver crossed Slovenia, entered Austria at the Spielfeld crossing and continued on the A9 Pyhrn motorway.
Fuel became the next hope. The Chiron was running low, and the team expected the driver to be caught at a gas station. Instead, in Rimac’s telling, he topped up about half a tank and kept going. Rimac guessed he never paid for it; that has not been confirmed.
By now the search was international. Croatia Week reported that police in all three countries joined in, and Austrian police credited close cooperation with Slovenian authorities. One Austrian officer had joined Rimac’s group chat and was receiving location updates throughout.
Shortly after 7 p.m., Austrian motorway police found the stolen Chiron at a gas station on the A9 near Seiersberg-Pirka, just south of Graz. They arrested the driver on the spot. When Rimac arrived, he said, about ten police vehicles and some twenty officers were at the scene, and he had to confirm the Chiron was his. He later praised the Austrian police’s work.
How Telemetry Helped Police Find the Stolen Chiron
According to Rimac, the Chiron sends its location, speed, fuel level and other data back to the company. In general terms, a GPS tracker alone shows where a car is. Speed and fuel add context: whether it is moving, how far it can go and when it may need to stop. That let the team and police anticipate the car’s movements rather than chase its last known position.
The limits matter too. Nothing in the reporting indicates the Chiron was slowed or shut down remotely; it kept running until officers stopped it. And this was the CEO’s own car, monitored by the company that built it. The accounts do not establish what any other Chiron owner can see.
That is the context for Rimac’s warning to would-be thieves: “you can’t do anything with the car without us.” It speaks to how closely the company knows its cars, not to a kill switch.
The Chiron’s rapid recovery offers a striking contrast to one of Bugatti’s greatest unsolved mysteries. Jean Bugatti’s own Atlantic, chassis 57453, vanished more than eight decades ago; Bugatti says there is no trace of it after 1938, and it has never been conclusively located. Now another extraordinary Bugatti has crossed international borders without its owner’s permission. This time, live vehicle telemetry helped police find it within hours.
What Happened After Police Recovered the Chiron?
The suspect, a 36-year-old Croatian man, confessed to the theft during questioning, according to the Styria state police. Theft investigators from the Styrian criminal investigation office took over the case. On the instruction of the Graz public prosecutor’s office, he was reported for prosecution but not held in custody. No charge or court date has been announced, and he is presumed innocent.
Rimac met him at a police station. By Rimac’s account, the man said he had come to the campus looking for a job, saw the car with the key in the cabin, and took it. He told Rimac the key being there was Rimac’s own fault, and said he had wanted to get to Germany. Those are the suspect’s reported explanations, not findings of fact.
Rimac did not answer with fury. He said the very fact that someone would steal a Bugatti, and this one in particular, told him the man had problems. He would not press charges himself, though he noted the justice system would pursue the case regardless, given the car’s value.
He had expected, he said, to simply take back his car and drive the man home. Sky News reported that Rimac wanted to give him a lift back to his family. Police didn’t allow it.
The Chiron did not come through untouched. AFP reported some damage that will be repaired; Motor1 described minor damage to the front bumper.
The habit, at least, is over. “I will not do that anymore and don’t try your luck,” Rimac said.
Most stolen-car stories end with a recovered vehicle and an angry owner. This one ended with a hypercar CEO who chased a stranger across two borders, by way of a data feed, a group chat and a Porsche, and then offered to drive him home.
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