The Getaway Bugatti · Croatia and Austria

Man Shows Up for a Job at Bugatti, Leaves in the Boss's $2.7M Chiron. The Boss Chased Him Across Two Borders, and Still Wanted to Drive Him Home.

Illustration for: Man Shows Up for a Job at Bugatti, Leaves in the Boss's $2.7M Chiron. The Boss Chased Him Across Two Borders, and Still Wanted to Drive Him Home.
Illustrative photo, not from the event. Photo: Matti Blume, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Graphics: The WTF Report.

Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac has a habit: he leaves the keys inside his cars at the company campus near Zagreb, Croatia, so his engineers can move them. That habit worked for years. Then it did not.

On Wednesday, October 28, a man in his mid-30s walked onto the campus. Security video shows him finishing a cigarette, getting into Rimac's Bugatti Chiron, and driving off. The car's base price is about 2.4 million euros, roughly $2.7 million.

Rimac called the police, then did what any of us would do: he jumped in his Porsche 911 and chased his own Bugatti across the border. The Chiron has live tracking, so his team fed its location to police while the car went through Slovenia and into Austria.

Austrian police stopped the car and arrested the man. According to Rimac, the man said he had come to the campus to ask for a job, saw the keys, and could not resist. Talk about a bold first day.

Rimac says he does not want to press charges, but he expects the man to be prosecuted anyway because of the car's value. Several outlets report that Rimac even thought about giving the man a ride home. The police had other plans. The car got some damage and will be repaired.

Rimac's new rule, in his own words: he will not leave his keys in his cars anymore.

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