Road rage is not a phenomenon isolated to the US. Anywhere there are frequent traffic jams and long commutes, it will flare up. It’s also not isolated by the make or model of the vehicles involved. While it’s easy to assume the driver of a lifted truck or the person weaving in and out of traffic in a clapped-out Scion rolling on a space-saver donut is more susceptible, it can happen to anyone, including the driver of a Bugatti Veyron.
That’s what happened recently in Jiangsu, one of China’s top provinces for finance and technology. Looking at the dashcam video posted online, we can’t tell which driver is at fault or has road rage. All we know for sure is that the BMW was in the right lane, and the Bugatti Veyron tried to cut in front of it. The BMW sped up to close the gap, forcing the Bugatti to back off. Moments later, the Bugatti driver tries to cut in a second time. The BMW speeds up again, and that’s when the two cars appear to collide.
The Bugatti Veyron suffered a large gash in the rocker panel and door on the passenger side. The damage is cosmetic and doesn’t look like it would affect the operation of the car, but it’s not going to be cheap to fix. Considering that a set of tires costs $42,000 and the annual service is a hefty $25,000, the price of paint and bodywork alone could be astronomical. And since it’s a Bugatti with carbon fiber bodywork, it’s not like someone can slap some Bondo on it and call it good.
Produced from 2005 to 2015, the Veyron was the first car produced by Bugatti after Volkswagen purchased the rights to the name and logo. Intended as a veritable cost-no-object moonshot, it was powered by an 8.0-liter quad-turbocharged W16 engine and had an astounding 253 miles per hour top speed. In all, Bugatti produced 450 Veyrons before launching the Chiron as its successor.
