News of a second Bugatti model isn’t new – rumors have been circulating forever. Back in September 2019, for example, we heard that Bugatti was planning to make an SUV of sorts. A month later, we found out that the Galibier name could make a comeback as an electric sedan, just to be followed up by news that Bugatti was considering a “daily driver.” The problem is that everything Bugatti does has to be approved by the people over at VAG and, as it turns out, the company needs the money so, despite selling 250 examples of the Chiron and taking payments for another 150, Bugatti has to shelve its plans for a second model. Thanks, dirty VAG.
It Looks Like We’re Stuck With the Chiron and Various Special Editions for a While
The $3 million Bugatti Chiron is nearing the end of its life. Four years in, and at least 400 have been sold – 250 produced and 150 orders taken. The company either needs to work on a second model to sell alongside the Chiron or plan the next Bugatti from which it will produce more special edition and one-off cars than you can count on both hands. The idea was for Bugatti to build a more affordable, daily driver. The term affordable, of course, being relative to a company that sells cars at $3 million a pop or more. That aside, the company now has to sit on its thumbs as VAG starts making cuts and stockpiling money.
Apparently, this boils down to the dirty VAG prioritizing liquidity in order to push through challenging times imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that a company like Bugatti gets the shaft, or as Stephan Winklemann told Automotive News Europe, it’s been put on the backburner.
As Winklemann sees it, the ultra-rich don’t take kindly to spending hundreds of thousands of their exorbitant amounts of money given the difficult times that we face in 2020 and, likely, the next few years.
Had the situation been different, we were expecting to see the second Bugatti as a more practical car. It would have had two usable rear seats and would have likely been electric. It would have sat a little higher than a normal car but wouldn’t have been a full-on SUV either. It probably would have been, but Bugatti would have played the same mind games that Ferrari does, the latter of which refuses to call the Purosangue a sports utility vehicle. The model, which would have been considered “affordable,” would have carried a price tag of somewhere between $575,000 and $1.15 million – a little to steep for most of us still but still significantly cheaper than the Chiron that Bugatti sells today.
However, with all of this said, it should be pointed out that VAG might have made the right call, at least for now, and as much as I hate to admit it. Had a second Bugatti been approved by VW, it would have required some pretty significant investment to get the ball rolling. We’re not talking about $1 million here or there – we’re talking about serious cheddar. Bugatti currently produces fewer than 100 cars annually, and a second model would have forced the company to move up to as many as 900 units annually. So, we would be talking about new and improved facilities, production lines, and lots of extra staff. With this in mind, I guess you can’t blame VW too much for wanting to hold off on a second Bugatti. It still has to suck for a company that builds $3 million cars to be at the mercy of someone else, though.