LONDON: Bugatti was always destined for an uphill battle building a replacement for its Veyron hypercar. And now, reports out of Europe suggest the price of such a successor will reflect the effort required to improve upon one of the world’s best-ever cars.
The UK’s CAR has put a €2.2 million (AU$3.48 million) price tag on the Veyron replacement – believed to be called Chiron – and told devotees to pencil in next year’s Geneva Motor Show for an official unveiling.
That’s an eye-watering €900,000 (AU$1.4 million) price-hike over the Veyron (if numbers are your thing, that represents around AU$5809 for each additional kilowatt over the Veyron SuperSport).
And the Chiron will pack plenty, with as much as 1104kW expected from an updated version of the Veyron’s 8.0 litre quad-turbo W16.
Torque output will be limited to 1500Nm to ensure transmission reliability, firing the Chiron to 100km/h from rest in around 2.8 seconds, on its way to a top speed of 460km/h.
With numbers like these, the Chiron should also leave the current hypercar flock including the Ferrari LaFerrari, Porsche 918 and McLaren’s P1 in its dust – both in price and performance.
And the March unveiling in Geneva will be the lowly ‘base model’, meaning more performance and ever-higher price tags will likely follow in drop-top and special edition Chiron models.
As reported in June, the Chiron may feature a two-tier engine line-up, with the standard petrol-powered option joined by a new hybrid powerplant.
A handful of potential buyers have already seen the Chiron, with Volkswagen reportedly inviting them to view the new model at Bugatti HQ in France to gauge customer reaction.
These buyers must have liked what they saw – or at least the idea of owning such a car – with the number of deposits and potential orders kept by Bugatti for its new hypercar believed to be in the double digits.
Furthermore, Volkswagen is looking to build 500 Chirons over the life of the model, which is 50 more than the Veyron.
