Click the image above for a photo gallery of the Bugatti Sang Noir
A darker, evil-er Bugatti Veyron has been born to run alongside the Pur Sang: the Sang Noir. Word is the newest variant has been created to be a tip of the hat -- that would be "chapeau!" in French -- to the Bugatti Atlantique 57S. It gets a slightly different front grille with matching side mirrors, black headlight surrounds, exclusive wheels, and an interior dressed in what looks like electric orange. All in all, the car appears to share nothing with the Atlantique other than the name Bugatti and choice of exterior color. But it's not like that would keep you from buying it, would it?
Click above for high-res gallery of our time with the Bugatti Veyron
We already know that Bugatti's second vehicle in the modern era will be a targa-top version of the Veyron 16.4, but AutoExpress has revealed that production of the open-air exotica will be limited to just 80 units compared to the coupe's comparatively ample run of 300 cars. The cost of letting the sun shine through your Veyron's dome will also be more prohibitive, with a price tag creeping up on £900,000 compared to the £840,000 cost of the coupe. As with most open-air cars, the Veyron's chassis will be made beefier to cope with the loss of rigidity caused by a big hole in its roof. As such, the new car will weigh more than than the record-setting original. Top speed will therefore be relatively limited, if one can call a 217-mph top speed limited. Then again, as we learned while driving the car ourselves, every car is limited compared to the original Veyron.
Click on the image to view three classic Arlen Ness customs
Arlen Ness, a legend to the custom bike community, started out by painting customer bikes on the weekends as he worked to deliver furniture during the week to pay the bills. Gradually, his skills and reputation transformed his small company into the parts-selling juggernaut that it is today. Along the way, Ness has created quite a few one-off creations, many of which are now considered to be classics. Some of them, like the '57 Chevy knock-off "Ness-talgia", twin-engined and twin-supercharged "Ferrari-bike" (above) and Bugatti-inspired "Smooth-Ness" recall iconic automotive designs of years past. According to Ness, those three bikes represent some of his personal favorites, and each of them, along with many others, will be on display at an upcoming exhibit at the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in Pickerington, Ohio called Awesome-Ness. Interested in attending? The event will run from July 24 through the end of June 2009.
Click to view the Bugatti Veyron's unveiling in Beijing
If you were looking for the new epitome of capitalism's slow-but-steady takeover of communism in China, we've got it for you right here. Bugatti brought its million-euro hyper-car this year to the Auto China show in Beijing, drawing hoards of spectators in its appropriate bright red paint job. What's more is that within two hours of the car's debut, Bugatti had already sold one.
The customer will fly to Bugatti's Molsheim headquarters to pick out the color scheme and options (apparently no one told him he could do it online), and pay a whopping 25 million yuan (approximately $3.6 million, more than twice the sticker price) for the privilege of owning the first Veyron in China. Mao who?
Click on the images below and the press release after the jump for more on the Veyron's unveiling in Beijing.
We've known as much for a while, but according to a Georges Keller, a Bugatti spokesperson quoted by Automotive News, a drop-top Veyron is in the works and is due to launch sometime next year. Details are scarce, but according to an unnamed ex-Bugatti executive, the targa-topped hypercar will feature a removable hardtop, but its overtly wealthy owners will have to plan ahead, since there won't be any room in the Bug to store the roof on the go. According to the anonymous exec, the decision to go with a hard top instead of some kind of cloth piece was due to the design of the Veyron's safety cage. Certainly a good call considering the Veyron's potential.
"Even in times of recession, people still want to have something of great quality." This is the idea behind the Fbg by Hermes edition of the Bugatti Veyron. So rest assured that while you and I are watching our assets plummet, somewhere out there, there is someone with enough surplus income to spend on an even more expensive version of the world's most expensive supercar. We brought you news and images of the special-edition Veyron from the floor of the Geneva Motor Show where it was unveiled, and were left wondering if the idea of the empire was really dead. In the video after the jump, the Wall Street Journal seek to understand – and more than that, explain – the justification for such an outlandish expenditure. Follow the jump to watch them try.
Gallery: Geneva 2008: Bugatti Veryon Fbg par Hermes
Exotic automakers have been lining up like their customers to get their supercars onto the latest driving simulators. If you own an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, the excitement has been palatable. If you prefer to get your horsepower kicks in front of your computer, however, you've probably been feeling a little left out as the lists of new cars for games like Forza 2 and the upcoming GT5 Prologue have been flowing like octane. But we've got good news for racing enthusiasts on any platform, as Electronic Arts has announced a new update for its Need for Speed: ProStreet game.
ProStreet is the eleventh installment of the popular Need for Speed series, with versions available for Xbox, Playstation and PC. The latest bit of DLC (downloadable content) is anticipated to include two new tracks and no fewer than 16 new cars. Among them: the Bugatti Veyron. The street-racing theme of the game seems an odd choice for Bugatti to grant its first license, but opens the question as to whether we'll see the Veyron appear in other games soon. Meanwhile the Veyron won't be the only new exciting piece of virtual machinery streaming to a system near you, as the expansion pack is also anticipated to include such mouthwatering wheels as the Aston Martin DBR9, Audi R8, Koenigsegg CCX and McLaren F1, just to name a few.
Check out the video after the jump to see the Veyron on the ProStreet customizing screen, cycling through even more options than Bugatti's own online configurator.
Click above to view more of the Bugatti Veyron in hi-res
The Bugatti Veyron does everything with effortless speed. Except, that is, for production, the rate of which is painstakingly slow. So slow, in fact, that the crown jewel in the Volkswagen empire is having trouble meeting demand. Since the hyper-exotic supercar's debut in 2005, Bugatti has steadily had to ramp up production, which started at 50 and is (in true Veyron style) rapidly approaching twice that. Arriving at the same crossroads yet again, the company has announced that it will once more increase output from its Molsheim, France, workshop.
Customers with $1.5 million in hand and a spot on the waiting list should not, however, worry about quality issues commonly associated with rushing production. In order to increase production from 85 to 90 this year, Bugatti is considering shortening the break the factory has traditionally taken in the summer from three weeks down to one, thereby increasing productivity without rushing the job. Nor will the increased production mean more Veyrons produced: the final number will remain 300, of which 220 have already been ordered and 135 produced and delivered to date.
If you're in the market for a Bugatti Veyron, first we'd like implore you consider how wonderful it would be to have your daughter marry a blogger. Then we'd direct you to Innovation Cars, a UK-based luxury car broker that is currently listing no less than 11 Veyrons available from locations around the world (mostly in the Emirates, probably) in a variety of trims.
At the top of Innovation's list is a slot on the waiting list to order a new Veyron for delivery in September. Innovation has also got the details on a limited edition we've yet to hear of in carbon fiber over black with blacked-out chrome and an orange leather interior. Among the other nine is the all-red Veyron we brought you earlier, as well as three brand-new, unregistered models and three more registered 2008 models. No Pur Sang or Hermes edition, though, so we think we'll hold on to our cash for now.
Click above to view high-res gallery of renderings
A few months ago, we wrote about an amateur designer who penned today's vision of a Bugatti Royale. It was all good at the front, and then things got a bit, well, funky at the rear. Now another car designing buff with a pen suite of software has created his idea of a 4-seat Bugatti GT: the decidedly gorgeous Streamliner 12-2.
Maltese designer Reuben Zammit designed the Streamliner as a 2+2 with "ample luggage space." Though we're sure if Bugatti ever created such a car it would be decidedly more expensive than the Ferrari 612, cues from Maranello's uber-GT can be seen in the Streamliner. But the nothing-but-curves approach gives it a Bugatti retro flair all its own. The car would use a twin-turbocharged version of the W12 engine and be powered by the rear wheels only. That would give the Streamliner rather un-Bugatti-like handling, which we think is even more reason to buy one. Check out additional renderings of the Streamliner 12-2 in the hi-res gallery below and let the designer know if you like his work in the comments.
Click above for hi-res gallery of the Bugatti Veyron Fbg par Hermes
The press release says "This car's greatest strength is its ability to make you feel like a child again (a somewhat boisterous child, admittedly)." We can't agree enough. Who among us doesn't have childhood tales of doing 200-plus in our €1.55 million toys? This blogger used to do it all the time -- no, really, all the time, 'cause I was really boisterous -- and I am sure I'm not alone. Hyperbole aside, it's a Bugatti, and that makes it exquisite. And frankly, even if you aren't a fan of Hermes, they do amazing work, which, incredibly, makes the Bug even more exquisite. The "H"-logoed wheels and the fitted bag are spot on. The Hermes engraved fuel filler door could be over the top, but one loses any sense of O.T.T. after flying by the $2 million mark. But hey, if we're all feeling like kids again, maybe I can get them to take 1.55 million mud pies instead of euros. Until then, thirty one hi-res photos await you in the gallery below. Enjoy.
Gallery: Geneva 2008: Bugatti Veryon Fbg par Hermes
Ah, the Bugatti Veyron. It's astonishingly powerful, sexy as hell, and only 300 will ever be made. Among the 300 Veyrons, the five rarest and most coveted models carry the Pur Sang moniker. It's stunning paint-free aluminum and carbon fiber body are bold enough to make even the wealthiest Dubai oil baron blush. There were likely many filthy rich people who missed out on the chance to bag a Pur Sang, as all five models were snapped up inside 24 hours. If you lost out the first time and had to settle for a Reventon or four Ferraris, we have good news. One Pur Sang is back on the market, but it's going to cost one of the world's wealthy almost twice as much as it did less than six months ago.
Italian dealer Rag Gianfranco Favero is selling its precious Pur Sang on the finecars website for the low price of only 3.2M Euro. The 1001-hp, 253-mph supercar has only 48 miles on the odometer, which, quite frankly, makes us scratch our heads. It's unimaginable that anyone could hold onto a Veyron for six months and drive it only 48 miles. Like it would be worth any less money if it had 800 miles on it.
We told you about the Bugatti Hermès Veyron two weeks ago. At the time, it appeared the uber-special Veyron would just have an ultra high-end interior package. Now, with the first pre-Geneva peek of a Bugatti Hermès Veyron, we are learning the exterior may get some special touches, as well. Although the car in the picture is almost entirely hidden by a blue fabric car cover, two new vertical slats appear flanking each side of the grill, which obviously imply other elements of the Veyron's visage will also change. Are these the only exterior "upgrades" to the million-dollar-plus Bugatti Hermès Veyron? We'll let you know when we see it in Geneva next week. Until then, hit up the source below to see the car covered in full.
Dubai may be home to one out of every five Bugatti Veyrons sold, but Abu Dhabi has a Pur Sang. Only five examples of this special-edition Veyron were built, and all were immediately sold at a $300k premium. We don't know where the other four have gone, but one of them just turned up in Abu Dhabi, the largest of the United Arab Emirates.
Some have mistaken this Pur Sang, spotted at night in the UAE, as a chromed Veyron. The Pur Sang – literally "pure blood" in French – is differentiated by its paintjob, or rather, lack thereof. The body panels were assuredly polished but left in their natural state of aluminum and carbon fiber, the separation between which does not follow along the lines of the traditional Veyron's two-tone color scheme. (The special wheels are also a dead giveaway.)
Follow the jump to see the video someone shot from the window of a car moving alongside the Pur Sang, but prepare yourself for the disappointment of seeing it get passed by a Toyota Land Cruiser. Thanks for the tip, SLICK!
Mike Connor from Motor Trend apparently rubs elbows with all the right people, as his sources within the VW Group say that a second car for Bugatti developed under the title of Project Lydia is not going to happen, despite the rumor that we "cut-and-paste blogs" reported a few weeks ago (Thanks Mike, we think you're a big jerk, too). Project Lydia was supposed to be an extreme, track-focused version of the Veyron propelled by an even more powerful version of the brand's 8-liter quad-turbo W16 engine. Connor reports that while an "inch-thick dossier" on Lydia exists, execs decided it was redundant to build an even faster version of the Veyron. Instead, he claims Bugatti's second model will be a four-door sedan with a coupe profile that's powered by the Veyron's engine mounted up front. As far as we're concerned, Connor's tale of a Bugatti super sedan, which isn't new, is still a rumor like the one we reported about Project Lydia, so believe whoever you want.
Your tax dollars at work: Border guards hold up traffic to check out Challenger
From the Awesome Files: V6 Miata auto-x weapon
VW Rabbit gets a carrot from Consumer Reports
Is Hyundai targeting Texas for a new manufacturing plant?
Spy Shots: Opel Insignia five-door hatch caught
_thumbnail.jpg "Lamborghini Reventon unboxed in Las Vegas")
