2012 Bugatti Veyron on 2040-cars

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No expense spared: Bugatti explains how it 3D-prints exotic metal parts

Bugatti deputy design director Frank Heyl told Autoblog his team doesn't balk at using the most expensive materials available, and he meant it. The company described how it 3D-prints titanium and alloy parts to save weight. Look closely at the back end of the 304-mph Chiron Super Sport 300+ or the agile Chiron Pur Sport and you'll spot 3D-printed titanium components. They're the intricately-designed covers installed over the exhaust pipes; they stick out from the carbon fiber diffuser. Each part weighs four pounds, which makes it 2.6 pounds lighter than the one fitted to the standard Chiron. It's one of the weight-saving measures Bugatti took to create both cars. Manufacturing the part requires firing up four 400-watt lasers that stack 4,200 individual layers of metal powder on top of each other while fusing them. The part is extremely thin in places but remarkably solid thanks to what Bugatti refers to as a "bionic honeycomb" structure, and it's capable of withstanding temperatures of up to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. That might sound like overkill, but keep in mind the cover is on the receiving end of a 1,500-horsepower, 16-cylinder engine. The exhaust system gets really hot, really quickly under heavy acceleration. Bugatti began using 3D printing in 2018, and now the Chiron Sport, the Divo, the one-off La Voiture Noire, and the Centodieci all use components made with 3D-printed metals. The part that covers the Sport's four visible exhaust tips (there are six in total) is notably manufactured using Inconel 718, a nickel-chrome alloy whose audial resemblance to a mid-engined model is purely coincidental; it's not a blend of molten Porsches. It's a material normally used in gas turbines, the blades attached to airplane engines, space ships, and even rocket engines. Making the cover takes several days. Engineers scan every part they produce with a computer tomograph to detect air bubbles that can get trapped between the layers during the printing process. If there are none, the part is blasted with a material named corundum, painted, and sent to the Bugatti Atelier in Molsheim, France, where it's checked yet again before it's installed on the car. Few exhaust tips have such a fascinating story to tell. "The advantage of the 3D printing process lies in the geometric shapes that are possible," said Nils Weimann, Bugatti's head of body development.

Bugatti sitting on $85M stockpile of unsold Veyrons

There may be trouble brewing with the supercar specialists at Bugatti. The French brand shocked the world with the Veyron when it debuted in 2006, but at eight years old, the hypercar may be getting a little stale to its wealthy clientele. What's worse, Bugatti insiders say a replacement is still years away.
Bugatti planned an initial run of 300 Veyron coupes when it went on sale, but the introduction of the convertible added an extra 150 cars to the docket. Generally, its cars have been built to order, other than some of its show cars. In December, Bugatti confirmed that it had sold its 400th car. Now, there are still about 40 Veyron Grand Sports to find homes for, according to Bloomberg, which amounts to about 62.5 million euros ($85 million) in product.
To solve the problem, Bugatti has devised the Dynamic Drive Experience that has the Grand Sport touring the US. It allows potential buyers to drive the car on the road and experience its raw speed on closed airport runways. The company hopes being hands-on with the supercar is going to move a few more of them.

Sold-out Bugatti Centodieci honors the under-appreciated EB110

Bugatti traveled to Pebble Beach, California, to introduce a sold-out hypercar named Centodieci. The limited-edition model celebrates the company's 110th birthday (centodieci means one hundred and ten in Italian), while shedding light on a chapter of its history that's often left unexplored. The EB110 was unusually designed and manufactured in Italy, inconveniently far from Bugatti's historic home in Molsheim, but purposely close to Ferrari's Modena headquarters. It comes from the same era as the original Game Boy and R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series, so interpreting its key design cues on a Bugatti penned with an eye on the 2020s was easier said than done. It's shaped like a door stop, its headlights are mounted relatively close together, and its grille is almost comically small. "Those are the ingredients I had to cook something modern with," Achim Anscheidt, the company's head of design, told Autoblog. Blatantly copying the EB110 was out of the question, so his team put a modern spin on its defining features. The Centodieci doesn't need to be shown next to the original; it stands on its own. Pill-shaped lights and a metal panel with slots that give hot air a way to escape the engine bay dominate the EB110's rear end. The Centodieci is a prima donna when it comes to cooling, however, because it packs considerably more power than its spiritual predecessor. Working closely with Bugatti's research and development department, Anscheidt chose to vent the rear end's entire width, and use 3D lighting elements to replicate the cooling slots. This solution works well and channels both the base GT and the more hardcore SS variants of the EB110. Bugatti wrapped the head-turning body around Chiron underpinnings. It's made largely with carbon fiber to keep weight in check, and it's powered by an 8.0-liter W16 engine, quad-turbocharged to 1,600 horsepower at 7,000 rpm, a 100-horsepower increase over the Chiron. Part engine and part work of art, the 16-cylinder sends its power to the four wheels through a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission that can be left in drive, or shifted manually using steering wheel-mounted paddles. To add context, the EB110 used a quad-turbocharged, 3.5-liter V12 rated at 560 horsepower. It featured a six-speed manual transmission, and permanent all-wheel drive. The Centodieci hits 62 mph from a stop before you reach the end of this sentence; it takes 2.4 seconds.