Note, 30 October 2026

The Bugatti that was stolen with its key inside, and what a key actually proves

On 28 October 2026 a man drove off in the personal Bugatti Chiron of Bugatti Rimac's chief executive, from the company's campus near Zagreb. The key was inside, as always. Police stopped the car in Austria that evening, helped by the car's live data. We found nothing that says the car itself raised the alarm.

What happened

The car is a Chiron Sport in dark blue exposed carbon with a red 16 on the grille, according to autoevolution. Austrian police put its value at about three million euros.

The chief executive told the story himself in an English video. The Drive prints parts of it; Jutarnji list reports it in Croatian, and quotes from there are our translation. He says he has left keys in his cars for years, because staff need to move them and because Croatia is safe. The campus has no fences, and the grounds are open to anyone. "The car was outside. A man simply got in and drove off."

"The craziest thing is that we would not have noticed at all," he says, because many friends and colleagues use that car. They found out when someone told him they had seen some guy driving it. His employees then asked each other in a group chat: "Have you seen the Chiron? No, you? You? No Chiron." The driver had an hour's head start.

He called the police, and "we were checking the telemetry data, which sends the location, fuel level, speed, and everything else." He saw it heading for Slovenia and went after it in his Porsche 911. The car entered Austria at Spielfeld. Styria police say motorway officers found it shortly after 7 pm at a petrol station on the A9 near Seiersberg. "One of the officers was in our group chat, had an update on the location all the time, and they caught him."

What the car is built to notice

Bugatti described the Chiron's telemetry in a press release on 16 April 2018. The system "keeps a close eye on about 10,000 signals from all parts of a car", and the release opens with a call about one tyre's pressure.

On theft: owners of the older Veyron had to report it themselves to start tracking, while "the Chiron will draw attention to itself automatically using the telemetry system in situations that are unusual for the car, for example if it is transported by truck." The engineer in charge adds: "In some cases, we have even been able to find customers' vehicles before the thieves were able to cross the border."

What nobody has said

No report says whether an alert fired, and we found no statement from Bugatti.

The line in our film, "to the car, he was the owner", is our reading, not a finding. A man driving off with the key, in a car that colleagues drive all the time, may not look unusual in any of those signals. We do not know what this car's system looks for today.

The telemetry did work once people asked it: a live position across two borders. Position data says where a car is, not who is in it, unless something in the car is built to ask.

Our take, and what we would build

Our take: a key proves you hold the key, and that is all it proves. On a campus where many people may drive a car, "the car has left" is a normal event, so the alarm has to come from a check of who is driving. This is an opinion from press reports; we do not claim Bugatti lacks any of what follows.

We would build three things: a second factor to drive, such as a PIN or an approved phone; a log of who drove it and when, so that "who has the Chiron?" is a lookup and not a group chat; and an alert when the car leaves a set area with no approved phone on board.

We would test it with one table: scenario, alert or none, seconds to alert. A colleague moving the car across the campus should raise nothing. A stranger with the real key leaving should raise an alert within a minute.

About the film

The film is our own animation, with no Bugatti or Porsche image or video. The Chiron is "Free Bugatti Chiron" by ALIEEEN and the Porsche is "Porsche 911 with interior" by n.brizitskaya, both CC BY 4.0. We repainted both and added the number. The chat's names and most of its words, the exact 911, the key, the truck and the gas station are illustration.

Transcript

Someone just stole a Bugatti from the boss of Bugatti.

His three-million-euro Chiron, parked at his own factory, with the key inside. Like always.

This car reports almost everything, even its tire pressure. So why did the office group chat notice first?

There's no fence. A man got in and drove off, and nobody blinked. Coworkers take it all the time.

Then someone mentioned a stranger at the wheel. "Seen the Chiron?" Nobody had. He was already an hour ahead.

So they watched it live on the car's own data, heading for Slovenia, while the boss chased it in his own Porsche.

Well, Bugatti says the car flags anything strange, like being loaded on a truck. But he had the key. So to the car, he was the owner.

Police caught him two borders later, at a gas station in Austria. And one of the cops was in their group chat.

All notes