Bugatti’s Veyron hypercar, in all its iterations, is all about big numbers.
Prices in excess of $1 million, horsepower ratings of at least 1,001, top speeds surpassing 250 miles per hour. Those are the kinds of stats gear heads know and love about the hyperbolic French road rockets.
But there’s only one figure Bugatti should care about, right now: 40.
That’s about how many open-top Grand Sport and Grand Sport Vitesse models it has left to sell out of the originally planned 150. All 300 Veyron coupes sold out in 2011.
In hopes of moving the 1,200-horsepower Vitesse into customer garages, Bugatti will be conducting the Dynamic Drive Experience. It will allow up to 25 potential buyers per weekend of the program to blast down open roads and a closed-off runway near them.
Until those dotted lines are signed, Volkswagen AG’s flagship brand will be sitting on $84.9 million of quad-turbo W16-powered inventory.
John Hill, the brand’s sales director for the Americas, says he expects all 40 convertibles to be off the books in the next 12 months. Only then can Bugatti introduce a new car, but don’t expect an announcement for another couple of years.
That’s too bad. In the meantime, as Bloomberg’s Jason H. Harper puts it, “Essentially, Bugatti is a car company without a car.”
Derek Shiekhi's father raised him on cars. As a boy, Derek accompanied his dad as he bought classics such as post-WWII GM trucks and early Ford Mustang convertibles.
After loving cars for years and getting a bachelor's degree in Business Management, Derek decided to get an associate degree in journalism. His networking put him in contact with the editor of the Austin-American Statesman newspaper, who hired him to write freelance about automotive culture and events in Austin, Texas in 2013. One particular story led to him getting a certificate for learning the foundations of road racing.
While watching TV with his parents one fateful evening, he saw a commercial that changed his life. In it, Jeep touted the Wrangler as the Texas Auto Writers Association's "SUV of Texas." Derek knew he had to join the organization if he was going to advance as an automotive writer. He joined the Texas Auto Writers Association (TAWA) in 2014 and was fortunate to meet several nice people who connected him to the representatives of several automakers and the people who could give him access to press vehicles (the first one he ever got the keys to was a Lexus LX 570). He's now a regular at TAWA's two main events: the Texas Auto Roundup in the spring and the Texas Truck Rodeo in the fall.
Over the past several years, Derek has learned how to drive off-road in various four-wheel-drive SUVs (he even camped out for two nights in a Land Rover), and driven around various tracks in hot hatches, muscle cars, and exotics. Several of his pieces, including his article about the 2015 Ford F-150 being crowned TAWA's 2014 "Truck of Texas" and his review of the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider, have won awards in TAWA's annual Excellence in Craft Competition. Last year, his JK Forum profile of Wagonmaster, a business that restores Jeep Wagoneers, won prizes in TAWA’s signature writing contest and its pickup- and SUV-focused Texas Truck Invitational.
