19
Dec 2005
Bugatti Veyron: Buying the best car in the world
We have all seen the Bugatti Veyron by now. Do you want one? Then you have to sign a contract with the company which - quite frankly - is rather absurd.
At MotorTorque, we don´t usually waste our time with top-spec racing cars. Sure, they are the cream of the crop of motoring, and they are a lot of fun to drive. But there are six thousand websites out there who will tell you how many horsepowers a BMW M5 has (507 bhp), what the top speed of a Koenigsegg CC is (242 mph), and how long it will take to whip a McLaren F1 from 0 to 60 miles per hour (3.3 seconds). Frankly, we don´t have the time to seek out all these details, because there is so much else exciting that happens in the automotive world. Let´s face it: Most of us will never own an M5, a CC or a F1, so why waste time on them?
87 Ford Focuses
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Of course, we decided we had to make an exception to prove the rule - and that exception would have to be the Bugatti Veyron. It has been long rumoured, but the Veyron is finally launched, and its first orders are being taken. If you happen to have £811,000 laying around, you can either buy 87 Ford Focuses and have enough change for a trip to New York City on 1st class, or you could buy a Bugatti Veyron, in all its 1001 bhp, 16 cylinder glory.
Yes, you read that correctly - the Veyron will set you back as much as 87 Ford Focuses.
But buying a Bugatti Veyron is a lot more tricky than you would imagine. To get your name down on the list, you have to pop down a £200,000 deposit, and sign a contract. The contract´s fine print contains quite a lot of interesting tidbits, including the fact that the whole deposit is non-refundable. So there will be no changing your mind, then.
DIY servicing? Nope.
Even after you would take delivery of the vehicle, you can´t do whatever you want with it - the contract has a series of rather strict rules in them: For one thing, you have to agree to let Bugatti do all the servicing and repairs. Which means that either do engineers have to fly in from France, or you could, of course, drop the car off at the factory yourself: There will be no tinkering around with the engine on a lazy sunday afternoon then.
Mind you, a simple oil change takes 42 litres of oil (yes, the oil sump takes as much oil as the volume of fuel an average family saloon stores in its petrol tank), so you may not want to do any of that in the first place. Of course, if your car needs a new clutch, you would be rather upset if you happen to live in Rio de Janeiro, and have to ship your car 5700 miles - practically to the other end of the world. But such is life of a supercar owner.
And when you are sick of it...
In a few years, when you are tired of the most powerful production car the world has ever seen, you may wish to sell it. And if you do, you are - once again - out of luck: Bugatti have a clause in their contract which means they have to approve of the buyer before the car is sold. If they don´t like them, Bugatti reserves the right to buy the car back themselves, as they do not wish to ´delude the reputation of the brand´. In other words: they don´t want a lot of porn stars, drug dealers and bling-toting gangster-rappers cruising around in their cars.
Poor drug dealers. I guess they are stuck with the BMW M5s, Koenigsegg CCs and McLaren F1s of the world, then.