Mate Rimac left the keys in his Chiron. Parked it at a Bugatti building in Croatia like it was a Honda Civic at a strip mall. The CEO of Bugatti Rimac had done this routinely, his logic being that nobody would be dumb enough to steal something worth several million dollars. Somebody was.
An employee at the facility noticed the Chiron blasting out of its parking spot with an unfamiliar face behind the wheel. A group chat among Bugatti staff confirmed the obvious: nobody recognized the driver. Police were called, and Rimac, standing next to his Porsche 911, decided he wasn’t going to wait around.
He went full throttle after his own car. The thief had a one-hour head start.
Rimac detailed the entire saga in a six-minute Instagram video that plays like a low-budget heist film told from the victim’s perspective. He tracked the Chiron using its built-in telemetry, which transmitted real-time location data, speed, and fuel level. The car was heading toward Slovenia.
The thief crossed one border, then another, making it all the way into Austria. When the fuel gauge dipped, Rimac and the police hoped a gas station stop would be the end of it. No luck. The driver apparently filled up without paying and kept going.
A Croatian car thief in a stolen French hypercar running from Austrian police on a half tank of unpaid fuel. You could not script this.
Austrian authorities ultimately made the stop. One officer had been added to the Bugatti group chat and received live location updates throughout the pursuit. Modern vehicle telematics turned a high-speed international chase into something closer to watching a dot crawl across a map.
Rimac said he declined to press charges, claiming he felt bad for the thief. That sympathy only goes so far. The value of the car alone ensures serious criminal consequences regardless of what the victim wants. A Chiron starts around $3 million, and grand theft auto gets a lot grander when the object in question costs more than most people’s lifetime earnings.
The real takeaway from Rimac’s video wasn’t the chase or the capture. It was the casual admission that keys were routinely left in vehicles worth more than some commercial buildings. Bugatti’s campus apparently operated on an honor system that would make a small-town car dealership in 1985 look security-conscious.
“We will not keep our keys around the factory anymore,” Rimac said, in what might be the most expensive lesson in basic operational security a CEO has ever learned on camera.
He also issued a direct warning to anyone considering a repeat performance: “Don’t try it; we have all the data, and you can’t do anything with the car without us.” Every modern hypercar is a rolling surveillance platform with GPS tracking, cellular connectivity, and remote diagnostics. Stealing one is less like boosting a car and more like kidnapping a device that reports its own position to its manufacturer every few seconds.
The Chiron was recovered. Rimac got it back. The thief got arrested in Austria. And somewhere in Croatia, a set of keys is finally locked in a drawer.
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