2008 Black And Silver! on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Bugatti Niniette 66 yacht is a 1,000-hp Chiron for the water

You know the problem with a Bugatti Chiron? It can't drive on water. Those poor ultra-wealthy Chiron owners will have to resort to some other brand for aquatic travel, and that just won't do. Bugatti recognized this issue and built a Chiron-inspired yacht with the help of boatbuilder Palmer Johnson. The companies actually started work on a yacht back in 2015, but according to Palmer Johnson, the design was different at that stage, and later it was redesigned to look like the Chiron. And it most certainly looks like a boat version of the hypercar. The horseshoe design on the sides of both are clearly connected, and the yacht is available in two-tone color schemes like the car. There are even options to have portions of the carbon fiber hull left exposed to show the weave. You can check out the different schemes using the online configurator. The yacht features both an open deck and interior cabins. Outside there is plenty of leather and carbon fiber, and the decking is available in various types of wood, including a naturally blue morta oak. The hot tub onboard also features a champagne bar, and nearby is a fire pit. Inside, marble joins the carbon fiber and leather, and the seating area has a surreal, flowing, organic look that wouldn't seem out of place in an alien spaceship. The theme continues to the bedroom, which features a double bed. The roughly 66-foot-long yacht also features a Man V8 engine displacing 16.2 liters and making 1,000 horsepower, good for a top speed of 44 knots or just over 50 mph. A 1,200-horsepower version of the engine is also available, propelling the yacht to 48 knots, or about 55 mph. The use of Man engines is also a nice touch considering that Man and Bugatti are owned by Volkswagen. The name of the yacht also has an interesting connection to Bugatti. According to Palmer Johnson, Bugatti built a speedboat in 1930, and it was also named Niniette, the nickname for Ettore Bugatti's youngest daughter. If you want one of these yachts, you'll want to act quickly though, as only 66 of them will be made. And price is only given on request. And you know what they say about having to ask for the price. If you miss out on the Niniette, there are other automotive-themed boats out there, such as a Lexus yacht or AMG speedboat. Related Video:

Discover the two coupes Bugatti wanted to sell alongside the Chiron

Bugatti has released two cars since it joined the Volkswagen Group in 1998: the Veyron and the Chiron. Both are high-horsepower, multi-million-dollar machines built in strictly limited numbers. That wasn't the original plan; executives envisioned a three-car range during the 2010s. Autoblog went right to the source to discover a pair of coupes — one below the Chiron and one well above — that were cancelled and have never been seen before. The French company first attempted to revive the practice of coachbuilding in the 2000s, but it shifted nearly every part of the process in-house because a majority of the companies it worked with during the 1920s and the 1930s were long gone. While this added significant costs and complexity, the success of Lamborghini's few-off models (like the Reventon) proved collectors were ravenous for exclusivity and more than willing to pay a lot for it. "We were not sleeping on the horse. Starting in 2004, I was constantly giving management ideas about what we could do next to the Veyron, on its base, or after it. Most never saw the light of day," Achim Anscheidt, the soft-spoken head of Bugatti's design department, told me as we walked through the company's styling center. Bugatti Veyron Barchetta View 5 Photos With coachbuilders like Henri Binder, Park Ward, Kellner, and Figoni & Falaschi out of the picture, the task of creating a new body fell into Anscheidt's lap. While he experimented with many projects, one he shed light on is a barchetta-like open-top two-seater (shown above) based on the Veyron Grand Sport. It featured the short, boat-like wraparound windshield that has historically characterized the body style, though "it could have been done as a roadster with a conventional windshield." Its proportions are recognizably Veyron-like, but the similarities end there. Its front end wears a vertical lights and bigger grille flanked by wide air intakes, styling cues later seen on the Divo. If built, the Veyron Barchetta would have arrived as a limited-edition model with a correspondingly high price tag, in part to offset the sky-high development costs. But as Lamborghini chalked up hit after hit, including the Sesto Elemento introduced at the 2010 Paris show, Bugatti's top executives were reluctant to adopt this business model. "They couldn't give themselves the push to make it happen," Anscheidt said with a tinge of regret.

Bugatti Chiron mule caught wearing stylish camo over hybrid drivetrain

Upon first inspection, this looks to be a strangely styled Bugatti Veyron. Such a thing shouldn't be a shock. We have, after all, already seen the hypercar with a penis on the hood and painted in nearly every single hue that exists on our planet. Take a closer look, though, and we see something altogether different. That's because this isn't a Veyron - it's new, rumored to be a replacement to the Veyron and is allegedly called the Chiron.
The first identifier that we're looking at something different are the huge carbon-ceramic brakes, which dwarf the already meaty pans found on the standard Veyron Super Sport. Beyond that, the distinctive snorkel intakes of the Veyron have been replaced with simple NACA ducts, while Bugatti engineers have ditched the car's enormous adjustable rear spoiler.
That amputation has allowed our spies to peek into the back of the car, and identify what we think are the components of an electric powertrain. Considering current performance trends, we shouldn't be surprised that Bugatti (and by extension, Volkswagen) are tinkering with hybrid tech.