Bugatti CEO In Porsche 911 Chases Thief Who Stole His Chiron From Croatia Campus: 'He Made It To Austria'

Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac's Chiron was stolen after he left the key inside the luxury vehicle on the company's Croatia campus.

30 Oct 2026, 11:53 · NDTV

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Mate Rimac's Bugatti Chiron was stolen from his Croatia campus after keys were left inside
The thief drove the car across the border into Austria before police tracked it via telemetry
Rimac usually left keys inside for convenience, but this incident changed his practice

Why did police have access to Bugatti location chats?

Mate Rimac, the CEO of Bugatti, had his expensive Chiron stolen from the company's Croatia campus after he left the keys inside. In a social media post, Rimac detailed the chain of events that led to the robbery and the subsequent recovery. The thief managed to drive across the border into Austria before local police tracked the car down using its onboard telemetry data.

Rimac explained that for years he had left the keys inside his cars, including the Chiron, because others needed his car to test something or fine-tune other details.

"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," said Rimac.

CCTV footage of the theft shows the man checking for the keys before quickly taking the wheel and fleeing from the campus, which has no fencing, according to Rimac.

"The car was outside, and a guy walked in and took the car, and the craziest thing is we wouldn't have even noticed because a lot of my friends and colleagues from the company, they use the car," he said.

"We only noticed because someone walked in and said, hey guys, I saw this person driving your car, he probably stole it. So he randomly told this to a few people in the company, and then the group chat with a few of my friends started to pop up like, hey, did you see the Chiron? No, did you? Did you? No Chiron. The car is gone."

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The Recovery

After reviewing the telemetry data, the Bugatti team found the car heading northwest toward Slovenia. Rimac got into his own Porsche 911 and began chasing the Chiron, which already had an hour head start.

"I was hoping that he would get caught before getting into the next country so that the border crossing would be closed. But he made it to Austria. And I tried to catch him. And as he was running out of fuel, we were hoping that he would be caught at the gas station," he said.

However, the thief managed to run away by just filling up half the fuel. Eventually, the Austrian Police managed to catch him as one of the officers was in the Bugatti group chat and had access to the real-time location.

"I learned that this guy, who has stolen the car, is a local guy here from Croatia. He has a problematic past, but probably family issues," said Rimac, adding that he was told to prove he was the owner of the car due to its high value.

"They took me to the police station where this guy was also. And they asked me if I want to see him. And I was like, of course, yeah. So I saw the guy. And he's like in his mid-30s. And you can see a bit, I don't know, strange, distressed."

Rimac said the man would be prosecuted by the Croatian and Austrian police, but he will not be pressing charges. He thanked the authorities for their help, adding that he will not keep the keys inside the vehicles anymore.

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