The Need For Speed

For those in the market for a Bugatti, the road begins with a pilgrimage to a chateau in northern France

WORDS: JEREMY TAYLOR

Automotive designer Ettore Bugatti is said to have judged the suitability of customers for his cars mainly by their table manners. Lapses in etiquette or poor knife control meant prospective drivers missed out on their dream machine.

From the company’s very start in 1909, clients would be vetted at the imposing Château Saint-Jean — a property near Molsheim in the Alsace region (now a part of France but then annexed to Germany), which Bugatti had bought and where he made his cars. The formal mansion, with its oeil-de-boeuf windows and balustrades, was built by the Wangen de Geroldseck family in 1857, on the site of a 13th-century stronghold of the Knights of Malta.

The Milanese founder of the Bugatti marque threw lavish parties here to celebrate his Grand Prix wins. The marque dominated motor circuits in the 1920s and ‘30s, won the first-ever Monaco Grand Prix in 1929 and triumphed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans twice. No wonder his were among the world’s most coveted road cars.

Today, the Château Saint-Jean remains the centrepiece of the company and, as I discovered on a recent visit, it’s a little more welcoming to the hopefuls who jet in to personalise a new Bugatti. Based on their investment, the clients deserve a warm welcome: a ‘standard’ 8,000cc Chiron costs from $2.6 million, and there are almost infinite possible upgrades with commensurately gigantic price tags.

No two Bugattis are the same: designer Jascha Straub custom builds unique cars. “Many clients come in with a firm idea of what they want, such as a family crest, favourite colour or seat material,” he explains. “Some choices don’t work, so I’m there to offer advice on how we remedy that. Ultimately, it’s up to the customer — the only feature that isn’t negotiable is the Bugatti badge.”

Most explore the company’s Sur Mesure customisation programme, which builds on Bugatti’s long history of coachbuilding and handcrafted interiors. One customer specified an elaborate Titanic Blue and grey scheme, hand-painted over the course of three weeks and known as ‘Zebra 1 of 1’. In 2021, the ‘Lady Bug’ featured a complex geometric ‘fading’ pattern that mimicked the spots on a ladybird’s wing casing. It took Bugatti’s paint specialists 18 months to complete the painstaking paint job for a demanding American client.

Perhaps Bugatti’s best-known vehicle is La Voiture Noire. It also happens to be the world’s most expensive car. A tribute to the brand’s iconic Atlantic model of the 1930s, the $18 million hypercar is painted entirely in high-gloss black, boasts six exhaust pipes and could have driven straight off the set of a Batman movie. “I’m shaping what will often be a once-ina-lifetime opportunity for our customers,’ says Straub.

Bugatti owners have included Tom Cruise, Jay-Z and Cristiano Ronaldo. The football star reportedly recently splashed out $10.5 million on a limited-edition Centodieci, one of 10 in existence, which can hit 236mph. Bugatti drivers also include billionaire fashion designer Ralph Lauren, who owns a rare 1938 Type 57SC Atlantic, and talk-show host Jay Leno, who boasts a supercharged 37A from the 1920s in his car collection.

Most prospective customers still make the pilgrimage to Molsheim, where the company’s space-age modern factory is right next to the château. However, for new buyers, it’s not merely rare leathers and gold fittings on the options list. Owners are surrounded by Bugatti exotica — I see everything from carbonfibre pool tables and rare bottles of Champagne to multi-million-pound home-speaker systems that will drown out any worries over the import bill.

Gian Paolo Fanucci is the company’s lifestyle guru and clearly a fan of the pool table, which is displayed in a domed orangery and surrounded by exotic plants: “The self-levelling pool table can be fitted on a superyacht and costs from $265,000,” he says. “Gyroscopic sensors ensure the table remains flat at sea. And it features a computer system that recognises ball colours, adding up the score for you.”

A further trip to a yacht broker in Miami may be required if you are interested in the company’s two-person speedboat. This is the $4.4 million Niniette, named after a Bugatti vessel commissioned by speedboat racer Prince Carlo Maurizio Ruspoli in 1930. The new version is designed with the same profile as a hypercar but also boasts a top-deck jacuzzi and a marble-and-leather interior. Apart from the exclusivity guaranteed by such prices, it’s not so much the splashy add-ons that appeal to the Bugatti fan. Rather it’s the raw power of the car itself. At the Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany on 2 August 2019, British racing driver Andy Wallace ratcheted a modified Chiron up to 304.77mph, setting a world speed record for a production car. Travelling at almost 140 metres per second, he covered a mile every 11 seconds, and had the five-mile straight been longer, would have emptied a 100-litre fuel tank in a mere seven minutes.

Now Bugatti’s official test driver, Wallace, who has also won Le Mans but now owns a modest Volkswagen hatchback, remembers the day fondly as we test-drive a Chiron in the countryside around Molsheim. “I didn’t sleep much the night before,” he says. “The whole geometry of the car starts to change at 280mph — everything happened so fast, I was constantly correcting the slightest movement of the car across the track.”

In 1952, five years after the death of Ettore Bugatti, his illustrious company ceased building. Several attempts to revive the marque failed before the Volkswagen Group bought the brand in 1998 and added the by then derelict château to its shopping list. Failing to buy the old Bugatti factory, now part of the French aerospace company Safran, it instead built a brand-new manufacture and started inviting customers to the château in 2005. In 2021, Bugatti announced a partnership with Rimac. The Croatian electric hypercar firm will help the company as it moves, inevitably, towards a battery-powered future.

Newly formed Bugatti Rimac has its headquarters in Zagreb, but the French luxury marque will continue to welcome well-heeled customers to Molsheim.

“Château Saint-Jean is still the heart of the brand,” says Straub. “As our founder once said, “Nothing is too beautiful, nothing is too expensive.”

That includes its latest model, the W16 Mistral, Bugatti’s fastest ever roadster that’s due for delivery in 2024 and priced at €5 million net for what would be one of 99 examples — though its entire production run is already sold out.

Even so, if you are visiting Château Saint-Jean, best not speak with your mouth full.