He finished his cigarette first. Then a hooded man in his mid-30s opened the door of a dark blue Bugatti Chiron parked at the back of the Rimac Campus in Croatia, settled into the seat, and drove away like it was his.
It belonged to Mate Rimac, the man who runs Bugatti.
The key was already inside. Rimac admits he leaves it there as a matter of routine, because engineers are constantly driving and testing the car.
Grabbing it is easier than tracking down whoever has the fob. That habit works fine until someone outside the payroll notices.
And someone could. The Rimac Campus is completely open to the public.
Security cameras caught the whole thing. The footage shows the man scoping out the Chiron, taking his time, then leaving without any visible hurry.
Nobody stopped him. Nobody had to.
The Rimac team soon realized the car was gone, and Rimac called local police. The Chiron’s tracking data did the rest of the detective work, pinging a live location that showed the car heading north toward Slovenia.
So the CEO of the world’s most exclusive hypercar brand jumped into his Porsche 911 and gave chase.
He never caught up. The thief pushed through Slovenia and crossed into Austria with Rimac somewhere behind him.
That outcome makes sense. A 911 is quick, but a Chiron is one of the fastest production cars ever built, and the man driving it had a head start.
Austrian police ended the run. They located the Chiron and arrested the driver.
Rimac then headed to the same station to prove the car was his, a small indignity for the man whose name is on the building it was stolen from. While there, he spoke with the thief.
The story got stranger. The man said he had walked onto the Rimac Campus looking for a job, then spotted a Chiron sitting there with the key inside.
He told Rimac he had hoped to drive it to Germany. Why Germany is anyone’s guess.
Police in both Croatia and Austria are expected to file charges, and given the value of the car, prosecution looks likely on both sides of the border. A cross-border joyride in a multimillion-dollar hypercar doesn’t end with a warning.
The Chiron came through better than anyone could reasonably expect. A stranger with no apparent experience in the car drove it across multiple countries, and the only reported damage is a scuffed carbon-fiber front splitter.
Credit the engineering, or luck, or the fact that the thief seemed more interested in distance than speed. Either way, the Bugatti team will fix it.
Rimac has conceded the obvious. Croatia may feel safe, but leaving a car unlocked with the key inside is a bad idea anywhere.
Most owners learn that lesson with their first used hatchback, not their Chiron.
The irony is right there on the security footage. Bugatti builds cars with tracking systems good enough to follow a thief across international borders in real time, and the weak point was a key left inside the car at an open campus.
The car is headed back to the workshop. The man who wanted a job at Rimac has a court date instead.
As for that key, it probably won’t be living in the car anymore.
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