Bugatti car sells for record $10 million; see images

Bugatti sold its last gasoline-only supercar at auction in Paris on Wednesday for more than $10 million, setting a world auction record for a new car.

Originally a special development model that was never intended to be sold, the one-of-a-kind Bugatti Chiron Profilée sold at the RM Paris Collector’s Car Auction for a bid of $9.5 million. With fees paid to the auction house, the final sale price was around $10.7 million.

The price was well above the $4.5 million to $6 million estimated by RM Sotheby’s for the car. The eight-figure price beats new car sales at previous auctions, according to Hagerty, a company that tracks the collector car market. But in particular, a trio of bespoke and highly personalized new Rolls Royces sold in 2021 for around $25 million each.

The previous record for a new car sold at auction was a Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta, an open hybrid supercar that sold for €8.3 million, about $9 million at current exchange rates, in 2017 at another RM Sotheby’s auction. . The proceeds from that sale went to charity though, which is a factor that tends to result in much higher sale prices.

The bid for this gleaming blue supercar was so high because it’s one of a kind, and in cases like this, collectors “bid knowing they won’t get a second chance,” said John Wiley, manager of valuation and analysis at Hagerty.

The Profilée is the fastest accelerating Chiron model, according to Bugatti. It is capable of going from zero to 100 km/h in just 2.3 seconds and up to 200 km/h in 5.5 seconds. Capable of reaching 380 km/h, it also has a higher top speed than the Pur Sport, but still not as high as some other Bugatti models that can, at least in theory, exceed 480 km/h.

The French luxury carmaker had previously indicated that the W16 Mistral convertible, unveiled in August last year, would be its last gasoline-powered model. Only 99 of these cars will be built at a cost of at least $5 million each. Mate Rimac, chief executive of Bugatti Rimac, Bugatti’s parent company, said that Bugatti’s next high-performance model will be a plug-in hybrid with a different type of gasoline engine.

However, Bugatti had one more purely gasoline-powered car to sell – and really only one. But this Bugatti was not originally intended for sale.

The Bugatti Chiron Profilée was being developed, as of late 2020, as one of several versions of the Chiron, Bugatti’s flagship model. Bugatti always said that only 500 Chirons would be made.

Included in that 500 were a few variants such as the Chiron Sport, Chiron Pur Sport and Chiron Super Sport, each with varying degrees of top speed, acceleration and cornering aggressiveness. Bugatti also made a few other models, such as the Mistral and Divo, which share engineering with the Chiron but are considered separate models.

While the Chiron, with its 16-cylinder turbocharged engine capable of producing nearly 1,600 horsepower, offered incredible performance, the Pur Sport provided more aggressive steering and suspension and even faster acceleration. But some customers were interested in something that was a mix of the two, offering the performance of the Pur Sport but with smoother styling.

As a result, Bugatti engineers and designers set to work on a new Chiron variant with the performance capabilities of a Pur Sport, but with a sleeker, more fluid design.

The Profilée has a larger grille and wider front air intakes than the base Chiron to take in more air to cool the big engine. The transmission has also been revised to shorter gear ratios to provide quicker acceleration and the engine can run at higher speeds.

The name of the car, Profilée, comes from a type of elegant teardrop bodywork design used on some famous Bugatti cars of the 1930s.

At some point, executives realized that all 500 Chiron models would already be on order before the Profilée could be offered to customers. However, they decided to complete this car, which the engineers of the development model were working on. The buyer, who the auctioneer did not identify, will receive the car directly from Bugatti.

While this will be the last car sold with the W16 petrol engine, it will not be the last car delivered to a customer. Bugatti, which makes about 80 cars a year, still has a backlog of paid orders through 2025, a company representative said.