Customers take receipt of the handmade Bugatti Chiron
The year 2017 has been incredibly exciting for the Bugatti brand. The launch of our new super sports car, the Chiron, has brought many extraordinary events to our French headquarters and beyond.
Since its world premiere 1½ years ago, the Chiron has been a true success story. Back then we started with outstanding order numbers for the car even before our customers had a chance to drive it.
In March this year we delivered the first customer cars. Since then, production at our headquarters in Molsheim has been running at full speed. Building the world’s most powerful and luxurious supercar requires the Haute Couture treatment. Each vehicle is made solely by hand in our atelier and is subjected to the most stringent acceptance tests and quality controls before it is delivered to the customer. In fact, we made many modifications to our atelier in order to accommodate the incredible performance and the generally more complex nature of the new product and its production process.
By the end of this year our specialists at the Bugatti Atelier plan to manufacture up to 70 cars.
At the end of March this year we hosted the first test drives for the international motoring press and our customers. The response was fantastic; we received enthusiastic feedback from all parties.
This fantastic feedback is reflected in our order books, too. Three hundred units of this exceptional super sportscar, which remains limited to 500 vehicles, have been sold.
The North American market continues to be an important region for Bugatti and draws nearly 30 per cent of total global sales.
The first U.S. customer car was delivered to its owner in August. On display at the 2017 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the first U.S. Chiron was a real showstopper with an eye-catching yellow and black colour scheme.
At the international motor show in Frankfurt, we announced the latest world record set by Bugatti and the first set by the Chiron: the 1,500-horsepower super car has accelerated from a standing start to 400 km/h and braked back to a standstill in just 42 seconds (41.96). This is the fastest time ever reached and officially measured for this driving manoeuvre for a production vehicle throughout the world. The record was set by Juan Pablo Montoya, winner of the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix, two-time winner of the Indy 500 and three-time winner of the 24 Hours of Daytona.
We conducted this driving manoeuvre to demonstrate the incredible acceleration and braking performance of the Chiron. With these impressive data the Chiron underpins its unique and unparalleled position in the high performance car sector.
Bugatti customers want and deserve the best of the best. This outstanding performance is further proof of the fact that with the Chiron they have the best super sports car in the world. The zeroto-400-to-zero record is the first step on our journey toward a new world speed record for production vehicles, which Bugatti intends to set in 2018.
With just 200 in the Chiron production run still available and more exciting events to come, we are eager to maintain the incredible momentum we’ve built and look forward to matching our exceptional cars with enthusiastic customers.