Mate Rimac surprisingly became the new owner of Bugatti last year. This Croatian entrepreneur looks back on the “crazy” story of the takeover and his appointment.
In July 2021, the Volkswagen group officially separated from the prestigious Bugatti brand. However, Porsche retained some of the control, but it was Mate Rimac who won the jackpot.
The founder of the eponymous brand, which specializes in electric hypercars, thus became the CEO. Majority shareholder with 55% of the Bugatti-Rimac joint venture, it is under his control that the future electric Bugattis will be born.
“It’s one of the craziest things”Rimac told AutoExpress regarding his discussion with Stephan Winkelmann and then Volkswagen. “We are talking to all car manufacturers. We are working on big projects with some of them. »
“When Winkelmann was CEO of Bugatti, he came to us several times to develop the next generation of cars. It was to be an electric SUV similar to the Ferrari Purosangue. At the time, we needed to revamp the powertrain of the Rimac Concept Two. »
“Then the head of strategy for the Volkswagen group called me and said he wanted to talk regarding Bugatti. In the middle of the conversation, he just blurted out: ‘What do you think of the takeover of the business?’. »
And to clarify that Volkswagen has considered simply stopping the French brand. “VW had several options, including killing the brand or selling it to someone else. But there is not just one opinion within VW. There are a lot of people with different opinions: the board, the Piech family, the Porsche family, the state…”
Two different approaches between Bugatti and Rimac
Rimac acknowledges that he did not believe in this proposal, at first, during this call made in 2019. “I thought it was a bug in the Matrix or I misunderstood it. I didn’t believe it was real. »
“So I asked him to repeat the question when he called me back months later and said, ‘Do you want to take Bugatti back?’ When he started talking regarding it, I realized how much it made sense to everyone, that it was a win-win-win situation. From then on, it took two years to complete the transaction. »
The one who always wanted to separate the two entities explains how he will maintain two visions of the automobile. He wishes to preserve the artistic and luxurious heritage of Bugatti, and the superlative approach of his initial creations.
“The technology will be different, but also the approach. Bugatti is heritage, craftsmanship and 100 years of history. It is a somewhat aristocratic perfectionism. »
“Technically, we’ll still have combustion engines for the foreseeable future, and that’s more luxurious. It has to be a bit serious, too. The Bugatti is more like going to the opera and driving at 400 km/h on the highway. It will be more beautiful, with analog instruments, a bit like a watch. »
“With Rimac, we want it to be absolutely crazy, all electric, drifting at 60 km/h with a gigantic cloud of smoke behind you, autonomous drift modes, futuristic stuff. »
“I feel like we have the two perfect canvases for totally different shapes of hypercars. Bugatti will lean more towards fine art – of course, performance will always be top notch – but there will be that artistic approach. Rimac will strive to bend the laws of physics. »
A “completely new” Bugatti without the W16
We already knew that the future Bugatti will be hybrid, since the Molsheim firm had announced it recently. What Mate Rimac tells us, however, is that his company has moved away from all-electric.
Indeed, as soon as it was clear that he would buy Bugatti, he launched a combustion engine project. This will allow the next hybrid to no longer use the venerable W16, a legacy of the Volkswagen group.
“It was not an easy time, but I knew exactly what I wanted the next car to be. We’ve started developing a combustion engine on our own, and what you’ll see next year is totally crazy. »
“I think everyone will be blown away when they see what we’ve done. We started developing a new combustion engine two years before we took over the business, which I guess nobody expected. »
The model will thus have no component in common with the Bugatti Chiron, and none with the Rimac Nevera. “It will be a rearranged hybrid hypercar. »
“It’s completely new, so there’s not a single piece carried over from a car. There will be nothing carried over from the Chiron, nothing carried over from the Nevera. Everything was created from scratch. »
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