Bugatti has shown off its latest bespoke hypercar, which was a husband’s gift to his wife for her 70th birthday.
The Chiron Super Sport, costing more than £3m and produced in limited numbers, is already a rare car on its own. But one customer had a dream to create a bespoke version based on a highly rare and valuable Bugatti – a one-of-four Type 57 SC Atlantic – she had seen 20 years earlier at the Mullin Automotive Museum in California.
The unnamed customer – based in the US – invited his wife for her 70th birthday to visit Bugatti’s headquarters in Molsheim, France, where she would remember the first time she’d seen the classic car and sit down with Jascha Straub, lead designer at Bugatti’s special ‘Sur Mesure’ division. Over a year, the idea would come to reality, with a host of details created to make this a true ‘one-off’ Bugatti.
Straub said: “During her visit, when we passed a scale model of the Type 57 SC – the very first Atlantic and the exact one she had seen all those years ago – there was an immediate spark of recognition between us that this is the direction we should take.
“The customer’s enthusiasm and active engagement throughout the whole design process were a constant source of inspiration. Her perspective, rooted in a profound respect for Bugatti’s heritage, and driven by a desire to craft an authentic homage, guided us in creating a vehicle that stands at the intersection of history and innovative engineering.”
Painted in the same silver-blue colour as the classic 1930s Bugatti, the modern-day Chiron also features a unique ‘horseshoe’ grille that harks back to the original. Polished five-spoke alloy wheels are also used for the Chiron, along with a range of chrome accents. The underside of the car’s spoiler also features a hand-drawn silhouette of the Atlantic.
The personalisation continues to the interior, with a ‘Gaucho’ leather selected, and a hand-stitched silhouette of the classic car on the door panels and centre console.
The Super Sport is one of the more extreme versions of Bugatti’s Chiron hypercar, and was made following the firm breaking through the 300mph barrier. It features an extended body, with its mighty 8.0-litre W12 engine producing 1,578bhpand enabling a top speed limited to 273mph.
Bugatti says the ‘57 One of One’, as this Chiron is named, will ‘achieve the same iconic status as its predecessor’ in the coming years, but that the customer is currently ‘enjoying her Bugatti driving experience’ on a US grand tour.