Bugatti has built a one-off Chiron that will appeal to anyone that spent their school hours doodling cars instead of paying attention to whatever the teacher was saying.
Bugatti on Thursday revealed the new Chiron Super Sport Golden Era, a special-edition model the automaker describes as its most challenging bespoke project yet.
The car is due to be delivered to its owner during next week’s 2023 Monterey Car Week, and is the result of two years’ work by the Bugatti Sur Mesure personalization department. It was commissioned by a fan of Bugatti’s history and the soon-to-be-discontinued W-16 engine that powers the car.
With Bugatti set to enter the electrified era with the Chiron’s successor, the customer wanted to mark the end of the current so-called “golden era.” The resulting Chiron Super Golden Era highlights various milestones throughout Bugatti’s history, with drawings of key models joined by the timelines of the original company when it was run by Ettore Bugatti, Jean Bugatti and Roland Bugatti, and the modern era spanning the running of the company by Romano Artioli and today the VW Group together with Rimac.
Bugatti Chiron Super Sport Golden Era – Photo credit: Bugatti
Bugatti Chiron Super Sport Golden Era – Photo credit: Bugatti
Bugatti Chiron Super Sport Golden Era – Photo credit: Bugatti
Bugatti came up with 45 various sketches of objects linked to the brand’s history, each of which needed to be hand-drawn directly onto the car’s surface which was initially painted with a color fade of gold and black. The sketching process took 400 hours to complete, with a huge challenge being the selection of the right scale and proportion for each drawing to ensure it remained appealing to the eye when drawn on the car’s curved surfaces. Among the highlights are the Type 41 Royale, Type 57 SC Atlantic, Bugatti’s Molsheim headquarters, and the modern EB 110, Veyron, and Chiron.
“It was very clear to us from the beginning that we can only achieve an authentic finish for these sketches—and at Bugatti authenticity is paramount—if we actually used the pens that we use for sketching on paper,” Achim Anscheidt, Bugatti’s soon-to-be-retired design chief, said in a statement. “So that’s why we had to find a process that would allow us to use pens and do all of the sketches by hand, directly onto the paintwork.”
As the car is based on the Chiron Super Sport, its quad-turbocharged 8.0-liter W-16 engine is tuned to deliver 1,578 hp, or enough for 0-60 mph acceleration in well under three seconds and a top speed capped at 273 mph.
The Chiron Super Sport is sold out but it was priced from 3.2 million euros (approximately $3.5 million), and Bugatti hasn’t said how much the custom work of the Golden Era car adds to that sticker.
