The legitimation of the Bugatti Chiron

Photo: Bugatti

When the Bugatti Chiron was announced, it didn't take long for people on the internet to call it "a failure". They took it to Facebook to vent their frustration with the car; "No one's able to afford such a car, why is Bugatti building this?". Even some car papers can't seem to find nice words for the new record-breaker from the French hyper car company, apart from a common take that it looks miles better than the Veyron.

Especially Jalopnik seems to bear a huge disliking for the car, writing that it's "nothing new". Part of the magic of the Veyron was that no-one expected it to happen. Volkswagen simply assembled this crazy concept, really did develop an engine made of two V8s glued together, threw four turbochargers in and sold the final product capable of doing speeds beyond 400 kilometers an hour to wealthy people. Just like that.

The Chiron also has an 8 liter quadturbo W16 engine and also does fourhundredandsomething kilometers an hour. And despite a clearly more sophisticated aero, you can still see the defining lines it inherited of its predecessor. But Jalopnik stays completely oblivious to the fact that building the fastest production road car in the world may or may not be only realised in a certain way.

Like Jalopniks Raphael Orlove, his collegue Jason Torchinsky from the same paper also made sure his two cents were published. The Bugatti is a "stupid supercar, a stupercar". "No one can physically do 400 kph, even with the Bugatti Veyron no one has actually done its top speed apart from the factory test driver and british car journalist James May for a segment of the british car show TopGear. Apart from this, he also made it a great deal to point out that neither the Veyron nor Chiron have a motorsports background. Because that is an absolute NECESSITY when building a hyper car, right?

Torchinsky even advocates that all hypercars, including the LaFerrari and McLaren P1, are stupid. Bugatti should sell trimmed down versions along with the top model, maybe packing a V8 or V10 from the Audi R8, placing it in the same market as Lamborghini, for instance. Volkswagen owns all the marques anyway.

And it's after these sentences that I asked myself: How salty can you actually get? Why do people look for beat-me-dead arguments against this car? And this was always the case, also with the Veyron when it was introduced. Go to any YouTube video with a Veyron in it and you will find comments along the lines of "over-priced shit-car" or "stupid Volkswagen". The list goes on.

Please don't get me wrong; I'm not one of those people who answer "Bugatti Veyron" to every single question asked. It's not the "best car in the world" and everyone who knows me knows this, because I repeatedly declared my love for the Mazda MX5, which is probably the complete anti-thesis of a Bugatti. But I can only shake my head on how there's an entire market for articles with literally no other purpose than to bash Bugatti for building the Veyron.

If I had the money for a Veyron, I wouldn't buy a Veyron. The same counts for the Chiron. But what I think or would do doesn't matter whatsoever! The same goes for Jason Torchinsky, Raphael Orlove or all the other people on Facebook complaining that they can't afford one. Neither the Veyron, nor the Chiron were made for these people.

The goal of the Veyron was to build something never before seen. A pure power demonstration of Volkswagen, if you want. The Veyron was supposed to be the absolute crown of cars you can buy. It was supposed to do 400 kilometers an hour without any modifications to the car and then bring the owner back home comfortably. It was supposed to lay a milestone and set a new standard. And it did.

The only purpose of the Chiron is to replace the Veyron. To be even faster. Even more expensive. The car now doesn't make 1000 bhp anymore, it now produces 1500. The speedometer goes up to 500 kph and the price rose from a million to 2,5 million dollars. No other car sets superlatives as the Bugatti Chiron does. It never was about what people could do with the car but what the car could do alone.

That's the reason the super-rich buy it. Not a Koeniggsegg or a Hennessey Venom GT. If they wanted a Lamborghini, they would've bought one. No R8 with interior styling ques you find on an A3 but the greatest and biggest the world has to offer. Even if all the car does is stand around in the entrance of a villa.

The opinion of these people is the only opinion that matters. Although, I think if Veyron buyers unilaterally decided that the Veyron-successor should look differently, it would go right past Volkswagens left cheek. Why? Because every Bugatti costs more to produce than it actually makes. Volkswagen loses money with every unit sold. Why? Because Volkswagen entitles itself to build these cars.