Bugatti and its $3,000,000 Chiron Question: How Many Do They Make?
Let’s unveil some of the mystery behind the brand, one question at a time.
Naturally, we are fans of the Bugatti brand and the cars they make. Perhaps you have seen the 6SpeedOnline reviews for the Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse, or, more recently, the 1,500 horsepower Chiron. They are a very special breed in the automotive world. In fact, fellow Editor of the site, Manuel Carrillo III recently noted a little factoid off-hand that is mind-blowing. It’s also quite the notable quotable.
“There have been, maybe, 1,500 people, alive or dead, who have ever driven a Bugatti in the entirety of the brands existence.”
However, with a price tag that even the 1% would pause at, you have to wonder just how many Chiron models Bugatti has managed to sell. We can do some rough math here for the brands history.
The “original” Bugatti, under Ettore Bugatti’s stewardship (and for about two decades after his passing) lasted from 1909 to 1963. Back then, the brand often made single-digit runs of their coach-built vehicles. Of course, their race chassis were used the world over, but again, in very small numbers. The brand had a brief resurgence form 1991-1995 as Bugatti Automobiles S.p.A., building 139 units of the incredible EB 110 super car. The Bugatti of today, Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S., has existed in its current form since 1998. After several prototypes, and concept models, the brand launched the ludicrous Veyron. A car that has been the thing of dreams for car enthusiasts the world over, with 1,000 horsepower. Produced from 2005 to 2015, and in four different variants, Bugatti sold 450 Veyron models all-in.
That brings us to the present. The Veyron is no more, and in it’s place, we have the striking Chiron. When the cost of entry hovers around $3,000,000, just how many Chirons have been sold? Bugatti was happy to answer this query for us. The car started production in 2016, and 2017 was first full year of production for the Chiron. In 2017, Bugatti produced and sold exactly 70 Chirons. Wolfgang Dürheimer, President of Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S was quoted as saying:
“It is a tremendous success for the entire Bugatti team that we have already reached the target of 70 vehicles in the first full year of production of the Chiron…This outstanding performance is especially important because we aim to keep the waiting times for our customers as short as possible.”
Currently, more than 300 vehicles in the Chiron series, which is strictly limited to 500 units, have been sold. The regional sales breakdown is about what we expected. 43 percent of orders have come from Europe, 26 percent from North America (USA and Canada) and 23 percent from the Middle East. The Asia-Pacific region accounts for the remaining 8 percent. Despite being on sale for less than two years, Chiron sales are quite strong for something so expensive and rare.
So less than 200 Chiron allotments are left until the brand unveils their next automotive fascination. We hope to be on-hand to see what that is, because it’s hard to imagine how much more insane engineering the brand can stuff into one car. Talk about good problems to have.
