Bugatti Veyron: Buying the best car in the world
Author: Haje Jan Kamps
Published: 19 December 2005
We have all seen the Bugatti Veyron by now. Do you want one? Then you have to sign a contract with the company which - quite frankly - is rather absurd. At MotorTorque, we don´t usually waste our time with top-spec racing cars. Sure, they are the cream of the crop of motoring, and they are a lot of fun to drive. But there are six thousand websites out there who will tell you how many horsepowers a BMW M5 has (507 bhp), what the top speed of a Koenigsegg CC is (242 mph), and how long it will take to whip a McLaren F1 from 0 to 60 miles per hour (3.3 seconds). Frankly, we don´t have the time to seek out all these details, because there is so much else exciting that happens in the automotive world. Let´s face it: Most of us will never own an M5, a CC or a F1, so why waste time on them?
87 Ford Focuses
Of course, we decided we had to make an exception to prove the rule - and that exception would have to be the Bugatti Veyron. It has been long rumoured, but the Veyron is finally launched, and its first orders are being taken. If you happen to have £811,000 laying around, you can either buy 87 Ford Focuses and have enough change for a trip to New York City on 1st class, or you could buy a Bugatti Veyron, in all its 1001 bhp, 16 cylinder glory. Yes, you read that correctly - the Veyron will set you back as much as 87 Ford Focuses. But buying a Bugatti Veyron is a lot more tricky than you would imagine. To get your name down on the list, you have to pop down a £200,000 deposit, and sign a contract. The contract´s fine print contains quite a lot of interesting tidbits, including the fact that the whole deposit is non-refundable. So there will be no changing your mind, then.DIY servicing? Nope.
Even after you would take delivery of the vehicle, you can´t do whatever you want with it - the contract has a series of rather strict rules in them: For one thing, you have to agree to let Bugatti do all the servicing and repairs. Which means that either do engineers have to fly in from France, or you could, of course, drop the car off at the factory yourself: There will be no tinkering around with the engine on a lazy sunday afternoon then.Mind you, a simple oil change takes 42 litres of oil (yes, the oil sump takes as much oil as the volume of fuel an average family saloon stores in its petrol tank), so you may not want to do any of that in the first place. Of course, if your car needs a new clutch, you would be rather upset if you happen to live in Rio de Janeiro, and have to ship your car 5700 miles - practically to the other end of the world. But such is life of a supercar owner.
And when you are sick of it...
In a few years, when you are tired of the most powerful production car the world has ever seen, you may wish to sell it. And if you do, you are - once again - out of luck: Bugatti have a clause in their contract which means they have to approve of the buyer before the car is sold. If they don´t like them, Bugatti reserves the right to buy the car back themselves, as they do not wish to ´delude the reputation of the brand´. In other words: they don´t want a lot of porn stars, drug dealers and bling-toting gangster-rappers cruising around in their cars. Poor drug dealers. I guess they are stuck with the BMW M5s, Koenigsegg CCs and McLaren F1s of the world, then.
What would you do with 87 Ford Focuses though?
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wow even if i had used my 30 million dkk i wont even live with it. agreement on a 200,000 uk pounds as a deposit, and cant get my money back thats too much for sure
i so want this car more than anything in th world
Why waste time on these cars? The answer should be glaringly obvious: because they are the stuff that dreams are made of and most people (if not everyone) love to dream. Take pornstars and glamour models for example. We love to fantasise over them, yet the chances of us actually being able to fulfil those desires are extremely unlikely. Yet we still dream and even enjoy conversing over it. This car is phenomenal is almost every respect the real question is why would you not want to waste (at least some time) on it. It is one of the motor industries most brilliant achievements.
As for the choice between buying 87 ford focuses or a Bugatti Veyron, why the hell would you (or most people who could afford it) want with 87 fords? Better yet what exactly would you want to do with them all when you could otherwise be cruising around in one of the greatest technological achievements in the motoring world? There is no comparison.
And as for no DIY servicing, why would you even want too? I for one would certainly much rather have some of the most qualified motoring engineers in the world work on my super-car then risk fiddling with it myself; especially when the technology behind the super-car itself is so advanced.
I also find the criticism over Bugatti being selective in whom you choose to sell it to, if you eventually get bored of it (and that’s is a very big if), to be a moot point. As long as you can actually sell it (should you get bored of it, and at this point I cannot even begin to comprehend why you ever would after driving around in it) then all is well and good. Even if you have to sell it back to Bugatti themselves; it really is moot criticism when you have the option of owning one of (if not the!) worlds most powerful cars. And in this day and age image goes hand-in-hand with good reputation.
Oh yes, and one last thing: even if you did live in Rio de Janeiro, and if your Veyron did require maintenance, you wouldn’t quite need to travel 5700 miles as you claim as Bugatti has its own branch located in Miami Florida, 4145 miles (approx) from Rio de Janeiro. That’s still a bit of a stretch I know, but your assertion was still inaccurate by over 1500 miles. Then again nobodies perfect not even Bugatti – but they sure do come close!
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uhm yeah.. thats a lot even if i had my 30 million dkk crowns it wont be even enough, agreement in a 200,000 uk pound deposit lol