Car for Sale: a 2012 Bugatti Veyron for $128,000

How badly do you want to own a Bugatti Veyron? Do you want one bad enough that you’re willing to spend $125,000 to $128,000 for a Veyron that really isn’t a Veyron, but looks like a Veyron? If your answer is “yes,” then you should go take a look at this 2012 Bugatti Veyron that’s up on sale at Car Export America.

Before you start tripping over yourselves rushing to buy this unique Veyron, you need to know that this is a replica Veyron and not the real deal. You also need to know that this replica Veyron sits on the shell of a 2002 Mercury Cougar. Yes, a Mercury Cougar. Think of it whatever you will, but there’s something oddly appealing about this replica Veyron. It’s not the real thing, sure, but where else can you see a Veyron that traces its roots to a Cougar? Nowhere else, I imagine.

I don’t judge people for their life choices and I sure as heck hope others don’t judge me for mine. That’s why I’m not throwing any shade towards this man from Florida who’s selling a Bugatti Veyron for $128,000. But, as we’ve already established, this isn’t your typical Veyron. The asking price, on its own, is a dead giveaway considering that the real Veyron costs around $2.5 million. That’s more than 20 times the amount our enterprising seller is selling his prized version of the Veyron.

Knock him all you want for building this project car in the first place, but give him his props, too, because his mock Veyron looks almost exactly like the real thing. The headlights, vents, grilles, and the whole bodywork — that includes the C-shaped B-pillar — are like carbon copies of Bugatti’s own design. It even has a rear wing that’s completely retractable, which is an impressive engineering feat itself. But like all things copycat, this Veyron comes with a few tells that will immediately ring those alarm bells.

The conspicuous lack of carbon fiber is one. Then there are the wheels, which, look more like oversized ninja stars than something Bugatti would create from its factory in Molsheim, France. I’m not judging the design of those wheels, or maybe I am. They’re hideous. Still, it’s easy to confuse this “Veyron” as the real deal, especially while it’s sitting idle in a garage or a parking lot. You might even fool a few people to take pictures with the car for the ‘Gram.

Take a peek at the interior and you’ll see the lengths by which the owner tried to make it look like the interior of an actual Veyron. The seats, dash, and headliner are all customized to look the part. The seats are covered in leather and the headliner even comes in suede, which is another impressive detail in its way.

Give him credit for the Bugatti logo on the steering wheel and the Veyron’s signature sliding center console, but the switchers, door latches, and even the actual steering wheel are nowhere near as refined as the ones you’ll see inside a Veyron. And this Veyron has rear seats, too. The real Veyron? None. Still, for a project car that’s meant to look like a Bugatti Veyron, you can’t help but appreciate the effort that went into creating this replica.

Unfortunately, the jig dries up when you start the car. Normally, starting a Bugatti Veyron means waking up a monstrous 8.0-liter quad-turbocharged W-16 engine and all the technical bells and whistles that come with it. That’s the normal expectation. This particular Veyron, though, is powered by a rather unassuming 2.5-liter V-6 engine that produces a grand total of 170 horsepower. You don’t need to be a genius with numbers to know that 170 horsepower is a far cry from the 1,000-horsepower output of the actual Veyron’s W-16 engine.

We’re talking about seven times more horsepower than the Mercury Cougar engine that’s sitting under the hood of this Veyron. It doesn’t matter if there are adjustable coilovers included in the car or if the exhaust system is “throaty and strong” as the owner described it. Mind you, those figures represent a brand-new V-6 engine from an era-specific, fresh 2002 Mercury Cougar. Given its age and the 4,200 miles on the odometer, I can assure you that this particular V-6 engine won’t come close to replicating the performance times of a “new” 2002 Mercury Cougar, let alone a supercar that can sprint from 0 to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds and hit a top speed of at least 230 mph.

I’d be remiss if I said that I’m not impressed with this project car. I actually am. I’m impressed at the attention-to-detail that went into recreating the Veyron using a freakin’ 2002 Mercury Cougar as the donor car. I’ve seen worse replicas that used better donors than this one. Even the level of detail that went into ensuring that all the pieces fit is impressive. I can park this in my garage and no one — maybe a few? — would be the wiser. I just can’t take it out on the road because that’s when people will find out that the only thing legitimate about this particular Bugatti Veyron is that there’s nothing legitimate about it. That shouldn’t take away from the seller’s effort, though. If anything, he should be appreciated for his work, even if it’s not the real thing.

In any event, I assume someone out there will have a tickle of interest in buying this replica Bugatti Veyron. If that happens to be you, you can head over to Craigslist Orlando or Car Export America and make it happen. The car is listed on both sites and the owner, to his credit again, is honest enough to admit that his Veyron is a replica and not the real thing. At the very least, you know with absolute certainty that this car’s provenance doesn’t go back to France. Maybe to Dearborn, Michigan where the 2002 Cougar was built almost 20 years ago, but certainly not in Molsheim, France.

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Car for Sale: a 2012 Bugatti Veyron for $128,000 - Better Look Twice

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