Mat Armstrong opens up on what really happened behind the scenes with Mate Rimac and Bugatti as he attempted to rebuild infamous crashed Chiron

After months of back-and-forth over his crashed Chiron project, Mat Armstrong has finally spilled the beans on what happened with Mate Rimac and Bugatti.

Forget flying dragons, this is the real never-ending story.

It feels like there’s constantly an update in the ongoing saga of Mat Armstrong and his crash-damaged Bugatti Chiron.

In a recent interview, Armstrong spoke about the entire experience and how it’s influenced his outlook on the project.

It’s been a challenging process for Mat Armstrong to get this crashed Bugatti Chiron up and running

If you spend any length of time watching YouTube videos about cars, you’ll have undoubtedly heard something about Mat Armstrong and a crashed Bugatti Chiron.

Originally owned by content creator Alex Gonzalez, AKA fxalexgyt, the Chiron was damaged during a stunt, and it was soon found listed on Copart in a pretty poor state.

When Armstrong got his hands on it, he set about getting it back on the road.

But Bugatti had locked the VIN, meaning that no dealership would supply the parts to support the rebuild.

Off the back of that, it became something of a back-and-forth, with company CEO Mate Rimac even getting involved.

You get the gist – it’s complicated.

It’s generated a ton of videos for Armstrong, and has led to plenty of publications covering the story, like yours truly.

But now Armstrong has opened up about the whole experience in a recent interview on Cars & Money, a podcast hosted by Rob Moore and Carl Hartley.

He compared his relationship with Rimac to a ‘Messi/Ronaldo rivalry’, in the sense that they were both cordial to one another, but the internet had sensationalized their differences.

“We both like cars, supercars, hypercars, whatever, we’ve got mutual friends,” Armstrong explained.

“But it’s when the corporate world gets mixed into it and then the story’s unfolded.

“My videos are going out, and [Rimac] made a response video, and then the internet’s taken that and [made it look] way worse.”

Hartley offered a defense for Bugatti.

“Bugatti is far superior than any other brand of car,” he said.

“They have to be the most expensive car, they have to go to the most wealthy customers.

“They don’t want you exposing them and taking them on head-to-head.”

Armstrong pushed back, questioning why Bugatti wouldn’t sell him parts for the repair, as he acknowledged he was taking full responsibility for the project.

What does the internet make of this whole dispute?

Hartley posed a hypothetical scenario in which Armstrong’s repairs weren’t up to scratch, and it caused an accident.

“The headline [would be] ‘Bugatti crash injures family of four’, that’s not good for their brand,” he opined.

“They’ve got to think about that.”

Both sides could see the other’s position, but ultimately didn’t agree.

It was Armstrong’s feeling that somebody else within Bugatti had vetoed parts being sold to him, as Rimac had allegedly told him that it could be done.

“I do think that there is someone else behind his words, because I do think it’s strange how the tone has changed,” he said.

In the comments section of the podcast, viewer opinion broadly seemed to align with Armstrong.

“Mat makes sense. If Bugatti does not want anyone to touch any repairs on their car, buy it off right from insurance directly before hitting the auction,” one person wrote.

But there wasn’t a universal agreement by any stretch.

“Crazy to me that Matt can’t see the brand risk that he is. I know he has good intentions, but that’s just not how the world works,” a commenter said.

Here’s one thing we can all agree on – this story isn’t going to leave the headlines anytime soon.

Supercar Blondie has reached out to Bugatti for comment.

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