Mat Armstrong takes his repossessed Veyron back to Bugatti after rebuilding it but ends up with unexpected surprise when he gets there

Mat Armstrong has had a complicated relationship with Bugatti, mainly because he’s been fixing both a Veyron and a Chiron in his home garage against Mate Rimac’s advice.

Rimac was adamant: while he admired Armstrong’s dedication, it couldn’t be done.

More to the point, he said it was potentially dangerous.

But Armstrong has fixed his Veyron, and now he’s driven it to Bugatti to get their reaction.

Bugatti made two points

Bugatti made two points, halfway between an educated assessment and a legal statement.

The educated assessment was that it would be impossible – or at the very least very difficult – for a ‘man in a shed’ to fix a highly sophisticated hypercar.

The legal statement, which is the one that matters, was that even if Armstrong somehow managed to do it, there would still be no guarantee the car would work in the long run.

Translated from legalese: you can try to fix it if you want to, but if something happens or the car breaks down, it’s on you.

Bugatti actually completely disowned the operation, blacklisting the VIN (of both the Veyron and the Chiron) so that Armstrong couldn’t get access to parts.

In the automaker’s view, even if the car(s) became drivable again, the structural integrity and safety, especially in the long term, couldn’t be guaranteed.

Armstrong has fixed the Veyron and almost fixed the Chiron, and what happened after was interesting.

Mat Armstrong has reached France, but not Bugatti

Mat Armstrong decided to drive his Bugatti from the UK to Molsheim, France, where Bugatti is headquartered.

The idea was twofold: first, to show Bugatti that the car could be repaired and made roadworthy, and second, to see how they would react.

Apart from a faulty fuel control module, an internal fuel hose issue, a brake light switch failure, and the inevitable overheating incident, the car drives and successfully reached Monaco.

Which leads us to the key issue.

If you look at the map, it’ll become clear that Monaco is much farther south than Molsheim.

And that’s because when they got to Molsheim, it was quiet and there was no one there.

This is probably for two reasons.

First, Rimac is headquartered in Sveta Nedelja, Croatia; and Mate Rimac, CEO of both Bugatti and Rimac (techically they’re one entity) lives near Zagreb, which is also in Croatia.

So we can safely assume that the manufacturer’s operations are probably happening across both Croatia and France.

But the main reason is probably found elsewhere.

When Bugatti said they disowned the cars, they probably meant it.

Still, this has been an ongoing saga, and Mate Rimac uses social media a lot.

So we can’t rule out some sort of acknowledgement on Rimac’s part at some point.

Or not.

We’ll see.