Bugatti and Rimac officially merged

Last summer it was announced that Bugatti and Rimac will be merged into Bugatti Rimac. Now that is officially settled. The shareholders have given their approval. The French Bugatti and Croatian Rimac now operate under the leadership of joint venture Bugatti Rimac, although the two brands will continue to exist separately and cars will therefore be sold under both brand names. So you don’t have to expect a Bugatti with Rimac logos or vice versa.

Of course, the merger does mean that a lot will be shared. For example, Bugatti can use the knowledge that Rimac has in-house in the field of electric powertrains. There is also an interesting side to this for major shareholder Porsche. In this way, the technology of Rimac is also more quickly accessible to Porsche. Because Porsche not only owns 45 percent of the joint venture, but also has 22 percent of the shares in Rimac itself. The diagram above shows how the (rather complicated) distribution of the shares works.

The joint venture does mean that the Volkswagen Group is no longer the exclusive owner of Bugatti and it also has direct consequences for who holds sway at Bugatti. That was Stephan Winkelmann, also CEO of Lamborghini, but it will be Mate Rimac. The founder and largest shareholder of Rimac is the brand new CEO of Bugatti Rimac. Winkelmann will from now on focus purely on Lamborghini. Bugatti’s production manager Christophe Piochon becomes COO at Bugatti Rimac, Porsche’s Larissa Fleischer becomes the financial top woman. Emilio Scervo will be the CTO, he previously worked at McLaren as chief engineer.

Bugatti Rimac is managed from its headquarters in Sveta Nedelja, near the Croatian capital Zagreb. A new R&D center for Bugatti Rimac is also to be built there in 2023. The Bugatti factory in Molsheim will also be kept, but from now on the main management of the brand will no longer be there.