$13m Bugatti Centodieci is already sold out

Bugatti has followed up its mega-expensive La Voiture Noire special – revealed at the Geneva motor show – with another low-volume limited-edition with a telephone-number price tag.

The French-based, Volkswagen-owned hypercar brand, founded by Italian Ettore Bugatti in 1909, is using this weekend’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in Monterey, California, to whip the covers off the Bugatti Centodieci, just 10 examples of which will be built – each priced at $A13.2 million (plus taxes).

As per the $8.3m Divo and the $27.8m La Voiture Noire, the Centodieci is a spin-off from the Bugatti Chiron and uses the same fundamentals.

Bugatti’s latest special will reportedly be followed by a 500km/h version of the Chiron, an all-electric ‘baby Chiron’ and the brand’s first SUV.

For now, the Bugatti Centodieci scores the Chiron’s 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16 engine, seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, Haldex all-wheel-drive system and carbon-fibre chassis as its basis.

That said, the W16 motor has been uprated to eke out 1176kW, which represents a 73kW hike over the Chiron, Divo and La Voiture Noire.

All 10 units of the Centodieci have already been pre-sold to hand-picked VIP customers, as is usually the case with stratospherically-priced low-volume specials from the top-tier ultra-premium brands.

In case you’re wondering about the significance of the nameplate, ‘Centodieci’ is Italian for ‘One-Hundred-and-Ten’, and the moniker is reflective of the fact the latest limited-edition car is a tribute to the EB 110, of which Bugatti built 139 examples from 1991-95.

Befitting its lineage, the Centodieci was last month previewed to a small selection of media – including this carsales.com.au scribe – at a private viewing in the same Campogalliano factory where the EB 110 was produced in the early 1990s.

The Campogalliano plant is now a dilapidated and disused facility, but its past grandeur is still evident, providing a glimpse of the brand’s heritage during its brief ‘Italian era’ when it was owned by Romano Artioli.

At the time, Artioli made the decision to shift the marque’s headquarters from Molsheim, France, to Campogalliano as the specialist personnel needed to design and manufacture the EB 110 were all based in Italy.

While the 736kW Veyron, which launched in 2005, was the car that propelled Bugatti to world fame with its 407km/h top speed and bewildering acceleration, the EB 110 was in many ways the true pioneer.

In fact, Bugatti design director Achim Anscheidt describes the latter as the “start of the Bugatti trinity, for which the Veyron and Chiron have been the successors.”

“The EB 110 was designed from a clean sheet of paper and its combination of a carbon-fibre chassis, all-wheel-drive and four turbochargers was unique at the time to Bugatti,” says Anscheidt.

It’s a little known fact that while the initial design for the EB 110 was penned by the great Marcello Gandini – the man behind the timeless Lamborghini Miura and Countach – it had to be substantially reworked by Giampaolo Benedini as Artioli wasn’t impressed by the shovel-nosed angular shape that Gandini had come up with.

The Centodieci pays tribute to EB 110’s pioneer status via an assortment of styling cues that link it to the yesteryear supercar – such as the oval perforations in the upper-rear section of its flanks and headlights set inboard and well back to mimic its ancestor’s narrow-eyed face.

Meanwhile, the trademark horseshoe grille is significantly smaller than those worn by the Chiron and Veyron and this, too, is a nod to the EB 110.

“If you look at the side of the Centodieci, it has a pronounced wedge shape, which is not how we normally design Bugattis,” Anscheidt says.

“This is a classically Italian design philosophy and Lamborghinis and Ferraris have this even until today. But if you look at a Chiron, it has a more relaxed feel in its profile, with the muscle coming from its shoulders and haunches.”

Anscheidt says the Chiron’s voluptuous shape is reflective of the fact that it’s not meant to be a “race car for the road”, but he suggests the Centodieci’s low-volume status and visual links to the EB 110 afforded him and his team with more leeway to stretch the brand’s design language.

The derriere of the Centodieci should remind you of the EB 110, but only loosely, says Anscheidt, thanks to the massive cooling requirements of the 1176kW quad-turbo motor.

“At the back there’s basically just a hole, and this is to extract the maximum amount of hot air from the engine bay. The tail-lights are reminiscent of the EB 110 but, in this case, they’re floating elements with the hot air basically just streaming out around them.”

Bugatti’s recent push to roll out a succession of exorbitantly priced limited-edition specials has been instigated by Stephan Winkelmann, installed as company president at the start of 2018.

Since the start of his tenure, Bugatti has unleashed the 40-unit Divo, which is pegged at $8.3m plus taxes, while the one-off La Voiture Noire is costing its owner (believed to be former VW Group boss Ferdinand Piech) in excess of $28m.

Winkelmann used much the same strategy in his former role as Lamborghini boss, bolstering profits with various limited-edition models costing eight to 10 times as much as the brand’s mainstream line-up.

The most high-profile example was the Aventador-based Veneno, of which just three examples were sold to customers, priced over $5m – and this was back in 2014.

A couple of years later there was the Centenario, which chalked up the 100th birth anniversary of company founder Ferruccio Lamborghini. Just 40 Centenarios were offered – 20 coupes and 20 roadsters – with a pricetag just around the $2.8m mark back in 2016.

A quick Google check reveals a pre-owned Centenario now fetches up to $5.6m, and hence the lure for collectors and connoisseurs to snap up such vehicles. They’re gilt-edged investments.

Stumping up the $13.2m million for a Centodieci won’t be an issue for its prospective owners as the average Bugatti customer – and we’re referring here to owners of merely the ‘regular’ models – has among their possessions 84 cars, three jets and one yacht. Clearly, they have the discretionary income to buy it without batting an eyelid.

Winkelmann has made no secret of his plans to diversify Bugatti’s model line-up to strengthen the brand’s business case, with the next key addition being an extreme crossover SUV that’s almost certain to eclipse the ballistic performance stats of the Lamborghini Urus and Bentley Bentayga Speed.

The Chiron, which launched in 2017, is expected to live on for at least another six to eight years, as the Veyron that preceded it had a 12-year lifespan. Naturally, there will be various other limited-edition spin-offs to preserve its appeal.