It’s still fresh in my memory, the $70 million auction price of that 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO. Now this, this past week, the sale of a one-off hyper-car by the French automotive behemoth – Bugatti, based off of an earlier model released a few months ago, the impressive but also pricey $6 million Bugatti Divo which was limited to a mere 40 units that were all already sold out before it’s official release.

The Bugatti La Voiture Noire “the black car” in English, costs just south of $20 million at $18.9 million($12.5 million before tax{and a whopping ₦6.8 billion, if you convert using ₦360 to $1}) was sold to an unnamed buyer who must have been a true fan because legend has it, Jean Bugatti, the eldest son of founder Ettore Bugatti, back in the ’30s designed and oversaw the manufacture of technologically advanced type 57s and 57SCs(different models/body type), one of them termed just the black car and was capable of hitting a top speed of about 125 mph or 200 km/h for those of us on this side of the Atlantic*grins*. A great feat for a road car in its time! Come to think of it, I might have driven something similar in the classic PS2 game “Mafia” set in a similar era(albeit these video games can be anachronistic at times) back in the day as I remember a certain mission where you had to drive a concept car which was a lot faster and more responsive than all the other vehicles in that era.

Anyways, back to the story, unfortunately, “the black car” wouldn’t be seen again and is rumoured to be worth around $100 million today.

All the while working on this article my mind kept going back to an article I read on the Huff Post, “The Difference Between A $5 White Tee And A $125 White Tee“, the summary of the gist at the end of the day was that the quality of the fabric mostly determined the price of a tee. However, many other factors such as cheap labour and production costs were closely behind. This has not been the case with Bugatti, except maybe the bicycle made in collaboration with PG that has a base price of $39,000(extra options could take the price up higher). A risible amount for a bicycle in my opinion even though 95% is composed of carbon fibre.

I remember watching an episode of “Top Gear” years ago and listening to Jeremy Clarkson point out that VW/Bugatti(Volkswagen owns Bugatti for those of you that didn’t know) was actually losing money on the first gen Veyrons because it actually cost around £5 million to manufacture each unit but they were sold for £1 million. Now, that doesn’t make any business sense but you get an inkling that it wasn’t really about the money but a mission statement.

Any variant of this iconic eponymous luxury hyper-car brand spots the classy yet powerful W16 engine that churns out more than enough horses to match your desire. The veneration of Bugatti is very well-deserved because nobody was really thinking that big in terms of the hyper-car mass market category and in the wake of Bugatti’s reception, more brands also began to dabble into this category as well but we all know who opened up the floodgates. I sincerely wonder what the future holds for these cars that are already near perfection.