Bugatti just sold its last purely gas-powered car for $10.7 million, setting a world auction record for a new car

PARIS– Bugatti sold its last all-gas supercar at a Paris auction on Wednesday for more than $10 million, setting a world auction record for a new car.

Originally a special development model never intended to be sold, the one-of-a-kind Bugatti Chiron Profilée sold for $9.5 million at RM Paris’ collector car auction. With fees paid to the auction house, the final sale price was approximately $10.7 million.

The price was well above the 4.5 to 6 million RM dollars that Sotheby’s had estimated for the car. According to Hagerty, a company that tracks the collector car market, the eight-figure price dwarfs previous new car auction sales. (But privately, a trio of new, bespoke, highly customized Rolls Royce sold for about $25 million apiece in 2021.)

Bids for this bright blue supercar were so high because it is one-of-a-kind, and in such cases, “collectors bid knowing they won’t get a second chance,” said John Wiley, Hagerty’s manager of valuation and analytics.

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Accelerating from zero to 100 kilometers per hour or 62 miles per hour in just 2.3 seconds, the Profilée is the fastest accelerating Chiron model, according to Bugatti. It accelerates to 200 km/h or 124 mph in 5.5 seconds. With a top speed of 236 mph, it also has a higher top speed than the Pur Sport, but it’s still not as high as some other Bugatti models that have been tested can at least theoretically reach 300 miles per hour.

The French luxury car maker had previously hinted that the W16 Mistral convertible, unveiled last August, would be its last gas-powered model. Only 99 of these cars will be made, each costing at least $5 million. Mate Rimac, CEO of Bugatti Rimac, Bugatti’s parent company, said Bugatti’s next high-performance model will be a plug-in hybrid with a different type of petrol engine.

As it turned out, Bugatti still had one purely gas-powered car for sale – and really only one. But this Bugatti was not originally intended for sale at all.

The Bugatti Chiron Profilée was developed from the end of 2020 as one of several versions of the Chiron, Bugatti’s main model. Bugatti had always said there would only be 500 Chirons. Included in this 500 were a few variants such as the Chiron Sport, Chiron Pur Sport and Chiron Super Sport, each with different levels of top speed, acceleration and cornering aggressiveness. (Bugatti also made a few other models, like the Mistral and Divo, which share engineering with the Chiron but are considered separate models.)

While the Chiron offered amazing performance with its turbocharged 16-cylinder engine capable of nearly 1,600 hp, the Pur Sport offered more aggressive steering and suspension and even quicker acceleration. But some customers were interested in something that was a hybrid of the two, offering the performance of the Pur Sport but with a mellower style.

As a result, Bugatti engineers and designers began work on a new Chiron variant with the performance of a Pur Sport but with a sleeker, more fluid design. The Profilée has a larger grille and wider front air intakes than the base Chiron to draw in more air to cool the large engine. The gearbox has also been redesigned for shorter gear ratios to allow for quicker acceleration and the engine is capable of higher revs.

According to Bugatti, the Profilée is the fastest accelerating Chiron model. It is capable of accelerating from zero to 100 kilometers per hour or 62 miles per hour in just 2.3 seconds and to 200 km/h or 124 miles per hour in 5.5 seconds. At 236 mph, it also has a higher top speed than the Pur Sport, but it’s still not as high as some other Bugatti models that can hit 300 mph, at least in theory.

The car’s name, Profilée, comes from a type of elegant teardrop-shaped body used on some famous Bugatti cars of the 1930s.

Eventually, executives realized that all 500 Chiron models had already been ordered before the Profilée could be offered to customers. Despite this, they decided to bring this one car that the development model engineers had been working on to completion. The buyer, who has not been identified by the auction house, will take over the car directly from Bugatti.

Although this is the last car to be sold with the W16 petrol engine, it won’t be the last to be delivered to a customer. Bugatti, which builds around 80 cars a year, still has a backlog of paid orders through 2025, a company official said.

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