Replacement for Bugatti Veyron still on the menu

Bugatti has announced it will soon produce a follow-up to the sold-out Veyron, says an official statement from French hypercar-maker.

There were fears, even within the Volkswagen Group, that the recent ongoing emissions scandal would see plans to replace the Veyron, put on ice, or be cancelled altogether as the German car giant attempts to find the estimated $12.6 billion it needs to fix the diesel cars that cheated emissions tests.

Instead of canning the hypercar, the French car-maker confirmed that interest in its successor has been “phenomenal”, particularly among North American customers.

Recently Bugatti has revamped its showrooms in Manhattan and Miami in anticipation of the new car and will open new sales outlets in Munich, Monaco and Tokyo.

According to the sales chief Stefan Brungs, the new showrooms have been a “fundamental investment in the future of the brand”.

It’s not all good news though for Bugatti, according to newswire, Automotive News.

Asking the company source if Bugatti would be affected by Dieselgate, the spokeswoman said that, like other brands in the Volkswagen Group, it needed to watch costs.

According to the same source, Bugatti has already started showing the next-generation Veyron replacement to some of its most loyal customers and that it would reveal the real car in the “near future”.

The reason many in the car industry thought the Bugatti was at risk was because of the huge costs involved in developing the last Veyron.

Selling for around $3.4 million per car, industry analyst, Sanford C. Berstein, estimates that if you factor in the costs of engineering the Veyron, Bugatti actually loses $6.8 million on every car it sells.

Despite this, the new, next-generation Chiron is unlikely to be a cost-cutting exercise.

Thought to feature a heavily-revised 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16 from the current car with the additional feature of hybrid assistance and, possibly, electric-driven turbochargers -- power is expected to be hiked from the outgoing Veyron’s 883kW to an even mightier 1100kW.

This means the Chiron will once again raise the bar for performance and hit 100km/h, from standstill, in less than 2.3 seconds and reach an incredible 464km/h.