Mat Armstrong made a fatal mistake that could cost him his Bugatti Chiron build after investing so much time into it
Published on May 11, 2026 at 2:41 PM (UTC+4)
by Alessandro Renesis
Last updated on May 11, 2026 at 3:25 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Mason Jones
Mat Armstrong has successfully restored a long list of supercars, but his Bugatti Chiron project is turning into a nightmare.
Everything went wrong from the start, beginning with Bugatti’s refusal to support the project.
So Armstrong took the DIY route, which automatically implies pros and cons.
And the con is that when things go wrong, they go wrong on a catastrophic scale.
Let’s start with all the things that went well
Amazingly, Armstrong’s ambition to restore a seven-figure car with no help from the company that built it is going relatively well.
Immediately after buying the wrecked Chiron Sport, Bugatti’s top brass disowned the whole thing.
Even Mate Rimac, CEO of Bugatti-Rimac, threw his hands in the air and said ‘nope, we can’t help you‘.
The hypercar, in Bugatti’s view was structurally compromised and therefore impossible to salvage.
Armstrong decided to do everything on his own – with help from some of his collaborators – and managed to rebuild a long list of components, almost from scratch.
Mat and his team rebuilt the radiators, the crash bar, and even the airbags, borrowed from an Audi A3, believe it or not.
But then Armstrong made a mistake that nearly cost him everything.
This is what Mat Armstrong did that nearly totaled the car
In his latest update, Mat Armstrong made a mistake that nearly ruined everything for him.
He accidentally squashed a fuel tank pressure sensor between sections of the Bugatti Chiron’s body.
It sounds like a relatively minor thing, but it isn’t.
Because the sensor was wedged, he could not rotate it to connect the necessary plug, which meant that repeatedly undoing the car’s titanium bolts could theoretically split the chassis apart again.
The words ‘split’ and ‘chassis’ in the same sentence never sound good.
Armstrong eventually decided the easiest and smartest thing to do was simply to replace the damaged sensor.
To make sure the same issue wouldn’t happen again, he also modified the access point by carefully cutting a small opening that allowed him to reach the sensor without removing the entire engine for a second time.
It was another small but vital win in what’s becoming one of the most ambitious and unconventional Bugatti rebuilds ever attempted.
After beginning his automotive writing career at DriveTribe, Alessandro has been with Supercar Blondie since the launch of the website in 2022. In fact, he penned the very first article published on supercarblondie.com. He’s covered subjects from cars to aircraft, watches, and luxury yachts - and even crypto. He can largely be found heading up the site’s new-supercar and SBX coverage and being the first to bring our readers the news that they’re hungry for.
