The Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo is as much a car as it is a mirage. Born to be raced by gamers in the smash Playstation title Gran Turismo 6, joining many other 'Vision Gran Turismo' creations from the likes of Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, BMW, Nissan, or Citroen, the Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo somehow transcended the world of gaming when Bugatti actually decided to build a running and driving example of it.

With there only being one of these ludicrous-looking, Chiron-inspired hypercars out there, crafty mechanic Jack Lee and his team had to make one from scratch and, amazingly, that's exactly what went down.

The Bugatti made in a shop that fixes trucks

Jack Lee is a man of many talents. If you take a look at his shop's YouTube channel, you'll be greeted by a cover photo depicting a modern Mack truck. Glancing and the description explains it all as Jack's shop focuses on tearing apart and then putting trucks back together. It's unclear how the shop's focus swiftly moved from Peterbilits and Macks to one of Bugatti's most outlandish creations ever but you can't blame the guys - after all, this is a true show-stopper.

We talked at length about the Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo back when it was first unveiled to a packed house of dropped jaws but, for the sake of this story, here's a quick rundown of what the Vision Gran Turismo is supposedly capable of, just to refresh our collective memory on the nature of the beast.

There's a huge fin sprouting from the engine cover that connects with the massive rear wing whose own end plates actually extend down and connect with the diffuser akin to the design of a mid-'00s LMP1 prototype.

To some extent, this is precisely what the Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo is: a blend between a Le Mans-bound prototype and Bugatti's Chiron hypercar. In a way, we reckon it epitomizes the upcoming 'Hypercar' regulations that will actually replace the current LMP1 class in the WEC (and at Le Mans) from 2021 onwards. It's just sad that Bugatti won't actually race the Vision Gran Turismo.

However, that's not the purpose of this car. The purpose of it is to break the virtual tarmac of Gran Turismo 6 and it's just because Bugatti was really nice that we ended up with a life-sized, functional example of this thing to begin with. So, if it's functional, what is actually under its skin? Well, in the game, the engine is an 8.0-liter quad-turbocharged W-16, basically that of the Chiron but heavily modded. The prototype, however, comes with the bog-standard Chiron drivetrain meaning 1,480 horsepower and 1,180 pound-feet of torque on tap to move this 3,800-pound behemoth. In the game, the output is 1,627 horsepower.

With all of its virtual oomph, the Vision Gran Turismo can reach 278 mph down the uninterrupted Mulsanne Straight. In real-life, given all the aero appendages and no power upgrade, it'd probably be slower than a normal Chiron and maybe, slower even than the Divo. The fastest real-life Bugatti is the Chiron Super Sport 300+ that, aided by a 1,578 horsepower output (less than 50 horsepower down on the virtual Vision Gran Turismo's output!), can reach 273.4 mph.

All of those numbers are mind-numbing so let's add another one into the mix. Back in 2016, when the car was sold through a secret bidding process to its first owner, Prince Badr bin Saud of Saudi Arabia, Bugatti got $5 million in exchange for the car. In 2017, the Vision Gran Turismo was sold to its second and current owner, Hezy Shaked, Chairman and CSO of Tillys. He reportedly paid in excess of $5.6 million for the car

First off, his team welded together a bespoke tube-frame chassis which was manufactured to house what looks like a V-8 crate engine. Then, the body was also custom fabricated along with the wheels, the interior, and just about everything else. The purpose, obviously, was to get it to look as close to the real thing as possible. What's, to us, the most amazing thing is that the body isn't made out of fiberglass. It's made out of actual sheet metal bent and welded into shape.

We don't know the specs of Jack Lee's replica nor whether it is roadworthy or not but the fact that he and his team decided to do this at all shows an incredible amount of dedication. As Lee puts it, he grew up dreaming of one day owning a Bugatti and he just couldn't let his youthful self down once he acquired all the knowledge (and means) to make that dream a reality - albeit through a replica. At the end of the day, when the real Vision Gran Turismo prototype, many outlets described it as a "replica" of the car in GT6.