Mate Rimac – pronounced MA-ta RE-mats – did everything wrong. He raced his E30 BMW until the engine exploded. And then, inspired by his long-dead fellow countryman, Croatian-born electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla, he decided to turn the BMW into an electric car.

It didn’t work so well at first. The racers he competed against teased him about bringing a washing machine to a motor sport event. But the more Rimac worked on the E30 EV, the faster it got. In April of 2011, his electric BMW set several Guinness and FIA records, including accelerating from 0 to 62 mph in 3.3 seconds.

By then, after seven major rebuilds, he realised the lime green car was much more Mate Rimac than BMW. So at age 21, he started Rimac Automobili, to develop electric cars. He was already working on the Concept_One, a swoopy-looking sports car with a funnel-shaped indentation on each side, from front to rear, that represented – wait for it – a sideways necktie! The necktie is a Croatian invention, so it certainly belonged on the side of Croatia’s only automobile.

Rimac needed publicity, so he loaned the Concept_One to Richard Hammond, the famous Top…