2008 Bugatti Veyron Black/gray on 2040-cars

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Average Bugatti owner has 84 cars, 3 jets, 1 yacht

Between Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti, the Volkswagen Group has no lack of prestige marques under its umbrella. And while some of these marques may produce models that compete against each other, each seems to be profitable enough in its own right to justify its existence. But what about Bentley and Bugatti? Surely these marques cater to the same customers, right?
Not according to their shared CEO. "The clientele between Bentley and Bugatti is remarkably different," said Wolfgang Dürheimer in an interview with Bloomberg. "The Bentley customer on average owns 8 cars. The average Bugatti customer has about 84 cars, 3 jets and 1 yacht."
That may be a slight exaggeration (we'd have expected three yachts and one jet), but it puts things into perspective: Bentleys are for the one percent. Bugattis are for the one percent of that one percent. Which only goes to show why it's taken Bugatti over eight years to sell 450 Veyrons - a number of units it would take Bentley about two weeks to move, albeit at about one tenth the price.

Bugatti Vision Le Mans designer's concept is ion-powered

Bugatti hasn't raced since the middle of the 1990s when Romano Artioli, its former owner, built an EB110 for the IMSA GT series and converted a second example to Le Mans specifications. The company is not actively planning a return to the track, don't expect to see a Chiron compete in 2020, but it still embraces its vast motorsport heritage, so one of its youngest designers dedicated his thesis to exploring what form a comeback could take. The Vision Le Mans concept shown in renderings puts a forward-thinking spin on the Type 35. Max Lask, a talented student who recently graduated from the Brunswick University of Art in Germany, explained his goal was not to create a retro-styled racer. That would have been too easy. Instead, he wanted to design a car that would be as advanced in 2050 as the Type 35 was when it made its debut at the 1924 Grand Prix of Lyon. There's a futuristic interpretation of Bugatti's horseshoe-shaped grille up front, but that's where the similarities between the Vision Le Mans concept and current members of the automaker's range end. The rest of the car is an ode to the principles of aerodynamics. Every wing, vent, fin, and scoop serves a specific purpose. Speculating what Le Mans-bound race cars will run on in 2050 required intense mental gymnastics. Motorsport is often at the forefront of innovation, so even 2020's most advanced technologies will look comically obsolete in 30 years. To that end, Lask envisioned a powertrain that runs on ions — and not the Saturn kind. It sounds far-fetched, but spacecraft already use xenon ion thrusters, and MIT successfully tested an ion-powered plane, so the technology exists. In his thesis, Lask opined it could sooner or later trickle down to the automotive industry. Bugatti stressed the Vision Le Mans concept is a one-off project Lask created to complete his design program, and it's not a preview of an upcoming model. While the French company is rooted in racing — the aforementioned Type 35 earned over 2,000 victories between 1924 and 1930 — the Circuit de La Sarthe isn't currently on the company's radar. Related Video:

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.