Bugatti’s Plan B
Share
2-min read
Some lessons are learnt the hard way. If you’re going to tell a man with millions of followers that he can’t fix his car, you should probably have a Plan B.
The story starts with Mat Armstrong, a mechanic and content creator with over 7.6 million subscribers on YouTube. He made a name for himself as the man who fixed salvage cars.
In late 2025, he took on the rebuild of a crashed Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport after the car was written off and sold at a salvage auction.
To fix the car, Mat needed parts from Bugatti. But Bugatti refused to sell him these parts, with its CEO, Mate Rimac, even posting his response on Instagram. He mentioned reasons like wanting to avoid unsafe rebuilds, and that the work wasn’t something that could be done in a garage. It needed the right equipment and people with the right training.
Mate Rimac said that only two facilities in the world were equipped to do what had to be done.
Ironically, Mat had already run into a similar issue on a separate project involving a Bugatti Veyron, where Bugatti refused him parts because they had a policy not to supply anyone outside of their authorised network.
So Mat, with help from his dad and a few friends, decided to do the rebuild himself anyway.
And he posted the whole thing on YouTube.
The internet started doing its thing too. People left comments telling Mat where to source spare parts, what kind of titanium bolts to use, and offering to help with specialist work like 3D modelling and scanning.
And suddenly, jobs Bugatti said required some of the most specialised facilities in the world were being documented step-by-step on YouTube.
There are some hilarious moments too.
Bugatti uses cutting-edge technology when working on these cars. And there’s Mat and his team using a wooden board and what appears to be garbage-bin wheels to balance the chassis while working on it.
And this is where Bugatti missed a trick.
There is something called the Streisand effect. It’s what happens when you try to hide or suppress something, and accidentally end up bringing more attention to it.
Because Bugatti could have handled this differently.
They could have just sold Mat the spare parts. Or given him some technical guidance. Maybe even sent an engineer to help make sure the rebuild was done properly.
Instead of fighting the story, they could have joined it.
Companies spend enormous amounts of money trying to control how their brands are presented. Their instinct is to protect the brand, so they want things done correctly so that it doesn’t reflect badly on them.
But you’ve got to know who you’re fighting. Bugatti wouldn’t give Mat the parts.
So they ended up giving him something more powerful: a story about a regular guy achieving something extraordinary with ordinary tools.