2008 Bugatti Veyron on 2040-cars

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Bugatti enters the car-branded hookah market

Ever look at the price of a new Veyron and wonder what they're smoking over in Molsheim? Heck, that latest special edition Vitesse costs nearly $3 million, and that's before taxes and delivery. Well, we've got the answer right here. It's a shisha pipe - the kind smoked in bedouin tents and cafés frequented by Middle Eastern gentlemen the world over - and it's branded by Bugatti.
The pipe is hand-crafted from titanium and carbon fiber (instead of the usual glass and steel) and stands about two and a half feet tall. It's made by a company called Desvall, which contrary to what you might think, is located not on the eastern or southern shores of the Mediterranean or along the Persian Gulf, but in Stockholm, Sweden.
And the price? A suitably Bugatti-like $100,000. That's a heck of a lot more than the already-outrageous $1,950 that Porsche Design gets for its shisha, which, let's face it, is basically a beautifully-crafted but overpriced water bong, to say nothing of what an average shisha would cost you in the bazaar. But we're sure there are some customers somewhere in the world who'd gladly pony up that amount to smoke a Bugatti pipe next to their Veyron in their lavishly appointed garage at the end of a sand-swept driveway. And Desvall only needs 150 of them, because that's all they're making.

Bugatti Chiron piloted by Juan Pablo Montoya sets 0-249-0 speed record

Bugatti has a penchant for recalibrating our notion of speed. Quickest, fastest, most powerful, world record — just words. Mere descriptors. To really get a sense of how quick a car like the Chiron is, you need to witness its ferocity in person. Since that's not possible for most of us, seeing it on video is the next best thing. So here's a quick video of a Bugatti Chiron, driven by Indy 500 winner Juan Pablo Montoya, accelerating from 0 to 249 miles per hour (400 kilometers per hour) in just 32.6 seconds. But Bugatti wasn't done. Equally as impressive, Montoya stomped the brakes at 249 mph hard enough to bring the Chiron back down to a halt in just 9.3 additional seconds, aided by the rear spoiler's airbrake functionality. Yep, that's 0-249-0 in 41.96 seconds. From start to finish, Montoya covered 1.93 miles in the Chiron, and it apparently didn't take much effort from the driver. "You didn't need the complex preparations we have to make in racing for the 0-400-0 drive," said Montoya. "With the Chiron, it was all quite easy. Just get in and drive off. Incredible." Incredible is a good word for it. But Bugatti isn't finished setting records with the Chiron. The company has stated its goal of proving the Chiron is the fastest production vehicle ever by beating the Veyron's top-speed record of 267.855 mph. That's planned for 2018, so there's plenty more time for records to fall and would-be challengers to arise. Stay tuned. Related Video: Featured Gallery Bugatti Chiron 0-400-0 km/h Record Run Related Gallery Bugatti Chiron 0-400-0 km/h Record Car: Frankfurt 2017 News Source: Bugatti Bugatti Luxury Performance Supercars world record Bugatti Chiron juan pablo montoya

1931 Bugatti Type 56 Quick Spin | Not the Bug you'd expect

Bugatti stores a handful of historically significant cars in a picturesque building located a stone's throw from its factory. One doesn't blend in with the rest of the collection. It's a small, yellow and black two-seater named Type 56 that looks more like a horseless carriage than a grand prix-winning machine. It wasn't designed to race. Ettore Bugatti, the company's founder, built the electric runabout in 1931 to drive on his property. Why choose to go electric? It doesn't require an immense leap of imagination to picture Bugatti poetically wafting around his estate in a decommissioned race car. The answer likely lies in ease of use. In the 1930s, it took considerably less effort to start an electric car than one equipped with a gasoline-powered engine. Size might be another factor in this equation. The Type 56 is visibly shorter and narrower than a Smart Fortwo, so it squeezes through narrow passageways with ease and boasts a tight turning radius. Julius Kruta, Bugatti's head of tradition, showed us how to operate it. The driver sits on the right side of the bench seat and uses his left hand to turn the front wheels with a boat-like tiller. From there, the Type 56 becomes remarkably straight-forward to drive; it's not as daunting as it appears to be at first glance. After releasing the parking brake, getting the car into gear requires pushing down on a foot-actuated, spring-loaded lock and using the shorter of the two levers that stick out from the wood floor to take the car out of park and choose forward or reverse. The taller lever selects one of the four gears, which are all available in both directions of travel. Power comes from an electric motor mounted directly over the rear axle. It's derived from (but not identical to) the starter motor used in some of Bugatti's bigger cars. It makes a single horsepower, which represents little more than a rounding error on the Chiron's specifications sheet. Batteries hidden under the seat cushion zap the motor into action for up to 40 minutes. Charging them takes a couple of hours. The 770-pound Type 56 has a top speed of roughly 20 mph. It was fully street-legal when it was new. It kept up with horse-drawn carriages and many of the similarly-sized runabouts zig-zagging through the region at the time. Letting it loose in today's traffic would mean risking death by crossover.