By now, you've probably heard the basics of the audacious Louvre Museum jewel heist that occurred on the morning of October 19, 2025. At approximately 9:30 a.m., around half an hour after the museum opened to the public for the day, a pair of thieves strategically placed a furniture hoist outside the second-floor window they planned to use to access their desired items.
With the help of two additional accomplices (so four thieves in total that have been reported), the team used cutting tools to get into two display cases inside the Louvre's Galerie d'Apollon. They ignored some other jewels and precious pieces of art nearby, instead concentrating their efforts on nine specific jeweled items that are considered priceless parts of French cultural heritage. Somewhere along the way, the thieves dropped or otherwise discarded two of the pieces of jewelry, including the crown of Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, which had over 1,300 diamonds and was damaged during the incident.
As my partner was telling me about this brazen heist shortly after the news broke, he mentioned that the thieves had fled the scene with the other jewels on scooters. "Let me guess, Yamaha TMAXes?" I said, half jokingly.
Except, joking or not, I was right without knowing it at the time. I had two reasons for jokingly making that guess. Let me explain.
No One Suspects A Maxi Scooter, Especially When You See Them Everywhere
The first reason is that, while the Yamaha TMAX is pretty unknown in the US, the same can't be said of its popularity in Europe. Both the TMAX and its electronic AllModCons sibling, the TMAX Tech Max, are extremely popular in multiple European countries, with France chief among them.
Think about the concept of 'sleeper cars,' only with scooters. Imagine someone painstakingly tricking out a super-stealthy Toyota Camry or a Honda Accord with hefty performance mods that look completely normal and stock on the outside.
There's a reason those two cars used to top everyone's 'Most Stolen Cars' lists forever, and it's because the things were practically everywhere.
But at the same time, while they'd achieved the supreme status of road furniture (meaning your eyes would pass right over them because you see them so much, you barely register that they're cars), also, no one would expect either of those two cars to be fast. They were just An Car, if you will. And thus, they'd also make the perfect candidates for a super-stealthy getaway car, because literally no one would expect it.
Now, a Yamaha TMAX might also get somewhat underestimated since it's a maxi-scooter. But at the same time, it's pretty powerful for a scooter. Drivable with an A2 license in France, it makes a claimed 35 kW max power (about 47 horsepower) at 7,000 rpm, alongside 55 newton-meters (about 40-ish pound-feet) of torque at 5,250 rpm. Curb weight is a claimed 219 kilograms, or about 482 lbs.
All these details are, of course, assuming that the TMAXes in question were completely stock machines, with zero performance modifications made. Which brings me to the other thing I thought upon learning of this most recent Louvre heist.
I Could Swear I've Seen This Movie Before, And It Turns Out That I Have
Now that I've had the chance to read some of the many news pieces written about the heist, I have of course seen more than one reference to France's favorite fictional thief, Arsène Lupin. But what immediately came to mind for me was a different piece of French pop culture, in the form of (strangely) a 2024 French heist movie called GTMax.
I'd embed the trailer for you here, except that it's kind of a mess and is very misleading in terms of the story it tells, versus the story that actually unfolds onscreen. You can watch it on Netflix if you want; it's about an hour and a half long, and I highly recommend watching it in the original French with subtitles on if you don't speak the language. (While I can't speak for the other dubs, the English dub is painful. Spare yourself and don't do it.)
Without too many spoilers, it's a movie about ... a fictional French motocross family! The movie centers on an elder sister, Soélie (Ava Baya), and a younger brother, Michael (Riadh Belaïche). Their mom and dad met through MX racing, and were both passionate and successful racers in their day; so much so that they bought and ran a successful MX track, and also have a fantastic collection of bikes to go with it.
But then, things changed. Mom died, Soélie went out on a bike while she was angry about her mom's death (I mean, relatable content), and she had a bad crash. Ever since, she's been dealing with the PTSD brought on by both her horrible crash and recovery, as well as her mom's death. Oh, and to top it all off, Dad's been selling off the bike collection piece by piece because the family is in deep financial trouble, and might even lose the family racetrack if someone doesn't do something about it.
I won't spoil the movie for you, but there's a lot of character development here that you wouldn't necessarily expect from a run-of-the-mill heist movie. Especially not one that involves a crew running souped-up Yamaha TMAXes (yes, for real). Interestingly, although there's a single lonely Ténéré 700 that shows up during the opening chase sequence, the movie isn't just a big Yamaha commercial. During one pivotal sequence where Soélie is finally getting back out on the family MX track and conquering her fears, she does some fliers on a sweet little Kawasaki KX 250, of the type where you can instantly feel the emotional resonance that she has with this bike.
That stands in direct contrast to the trio of TMAXes that are the stars of this movie. At the opening, we're made to understand that an elite team of thieves on modified TMAXes are running wild on the streets of Paris, stealing watches and jewels in equal measure.
While, as I said, I don't want to totally spoil this movie for you in case you decide to watch it, I do want to point out one thing that some folks have taken issue with. There's a scene where Soélie, who's been using her skills as an ace motorbike mechanic to get by since she stopped riding, is introduced to the TMAX fleet and informed of what kind of modifications the thieves want to make before their next big heist (which, yes, involves jewels, but does not involve a certain world-famous museum).
In it, they talk about boosting a variator on at least one of the scoots. If you're unfamiliar with the CVTs on modern maxi-scooters, that might sound like meaningless gibberish, but it's not. The variator on a modern maxi-scooter uses centrifugal force to spin out roller weights to affect how and where the power is delivered in the rev range as your big, Kevlar-reinforced drive belt races around inside the transmission case.
Changing out the variator springs and weights can drastically affect how and where this happens, and is one way that scooter racers (or anyone interested in changing the pickup of their scooter, if not the peak power) can alter the performance of their machines. (Shoutout to the OGs in the scooter tuning game, Malossi and Polini, what is up?!)
So, messing around with your roller weights, springs, and variator won't increase top speed. But it can affect how quickly you're able to pull away from a stop, as well as where the power is delivered as you twist the throttle. You have to be careful, though, because you can end up with dead spots (where you're twisting the throttle hard, but not getting much or even any additional grunt) if you don't tune it correctly.
Anyway, Back To The Real-Life Louvre Heist on TMAXes
In real life, as in the GTMax movie, the thieves allegedly stole jewels and then fled on TMAXes. However, unlike in the movie, the real-life heist involved theft from the Louvre, and not from a planned transport of said jewels in a fleet of four-wheeled vehicles on an established route through the streets of Paris (that's the movie heist, if you follow).
So, hypothetically speaking, if you're stealing from the Louvre, why go for the (literal) crown jewels and not for any of the priceless works of art housed by the world's most famous museum?
That's an easy one; if you're looking to make money, you can't just go up to any shady art dealer and show up with the Mona Lisa and expect to get paid.
With jewels, on the other hand, there are a lot more options to make them less easily traceable, such as selling the precious stones by themselves or cutting them into smaller stones so they're less easily identified. Sure, you may destroy priceless cultural and historical artifacts in the process, but if that's not something that bothers you (shame on you), then the math is relatively simple, experts told Reuters.
