Bugatti CEO's 3.3 million dollar Chiron stolen from factory with keys inside

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Instagram/@materimac zerohedge.com

Bugatti chief executive Mate Rimac's own Chiron, valued at $3.3 million, was stolen from the company's Zagreb-area campus by a stranger who walked in, found the keys inside the car, and drove off. Security footage shows a hoodie-wearing man approaching the blue hypercar, glancing around, and climbing behind the wheel. Rimac, who had left the keys inside as a matter of habit — "I'm so proud of Croatia being so safe," he explained in an Instagram video — discovered the theft only after employees assumed someone had borrowed the car.

What followed was a cross-border chase assembled from consumer-grade parts. Rimac used the Chiron's built-in tracking system to follow the car toward Slovenia, then pursued in his own Porsche 911 despite the thief's one-hour head start. The suspect stopped en route to fill the Bugatti's 8.0-liter tank with half a tank of fuel and, in the day's most reliable data point, did not pay for it. Austrian police, fed the car's position in real time by Rimac's team, arrested a 36-year-old Croatian national at a petrol station near Seiersberg in Styria shortly after 7 p.m. The Chiron suffered minor damage.

Rimac declined to press charges and said he considered driving the suspect home. The man told police he had visited Bugatti's headquarters looking for a job, but "saw the car and it had a key inside." Authorities overruled Rimac's magnanimity: because of the car's value, they will pursue the case regardless.