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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.

Bugatti has sold the last Veyron

It's the end of an era, boys and girls: Bugatti has sold the last Veyron ever to be made. And in doing so, it sets the sun on a saga dating back ten years to when production began – and even longer since Volkswagen began development of what would become one of, if not the most powerful and fastest supercars of all time. The story of the Veyron dates back to 1998 when VW bought the rights to the Bugatti name. It subsequently rolled out a series of concept cars to preview what it had in store for the storied Alsatian marque, setting upon the final design in 2001 and determining to put it into production. It would be another four years or so before the Veyron would finally be ready, but once it was, nobody cared how long it had taken. It was one of the most impressive feats of automotive engineering ever undertaken and the harbinger of a new era of million-dollar exotics. (Or $2.6 million, we should say, because that's the average price paid for a new Veyron.) Bugatti set about making 300 coupes, which it completed in September 2011, and subsequently undertook the additional production of 150 roadsters. Now that final example – the 450th and final Veyron ever to be made – has been sold to a customer in the Middle East (naturally), the news arriving hot on the heels of a similar development with another seven-figure European exotic as the Pagani Huayra has sold out its entire allotment as well. Dubbed the Grand Sport Vitesse La Finale, the final Veyron will be showcased at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show. Some time after that, we hope the House that Ettore Built will tell us a little more about what it has planned next. Bugatti sells the last Veyron - Bugatti president Wolfgang Durheimer: "An unprecedented chapter in automobile history has reached its climax" - World premiere for the 450th Veyron at the Geneva Motor Show - Veyron is the world's most powerful and fastest production supercar Molsheim, 23rd February 2015. Bugatti has sold the 450th and last Veyron. 16 cylinders, 1,200 PS, a maximum torque of 1,500 Nm, 0 to 100 km/h in 2.5 seconds and a world record speed of 431.072 km/h – these are the figures that describe the magic and uniqueness of the ultimate supercar of the modern era. The Veyron has caused a sensation across the world ever since its launch ten years ago.

Bugatti shows off the 10th and final Centodieci

Limited to 10 examples globally, the heritage-laced Centodieci has left the Bugatti range and entered the pantheon of automotive history. The company built the final car in its Molsheim, France, factory and delivered it to its anonymous new owner. Sold-out before its debut in August 2019, the Centodieci is a tribute to the EB110 released in 1991. It's related to the Chiron under the skin, but it's different enough that it was put through a series of tests before executives signed it off — hot weather testing notably took place in the American desert. Production of the first prototype began in August 2021 and Bugatti started building the 10 cars planned shortly after. Customers were invited to work directly with Bugatti to personalize their Centodieci's design. The last example (pictured above) is finished in Quartz White with Black Carbon accents on the lower part of the body and Light Blue Sport paint on the massive brake calipers. Light Blue Sport paint on the rear wing adds a finishing touch to the look, and Bugatti notes this color is inspired by one that was offered on the EB110. Light Blue Sport leather dominates the interior: It's on the seats, the door panels, the dashboard, and the headliner. The trim is either bare carbon fiber or black, and the door sills feature "Centodieci 10/10"-branded plates to underline the limited-edition car's serial number. Power for the Centodieci comes from a quad-turbocharged, 8.0-liter W16 engine tuned to develop about 1,600 horsepower (that's roughly 100 more than the Chiron's version of this engine) and 1,180 pound-feet of torque. Mid-mounted, it spins the four wheels via a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. Bugatti quotes a zero-to-62-mph time of 2.4 seconds and a top speed that lies north of 230 mph. The last Centodieci closes a chapter of Bugatti's history that also includes 40 units of the Divo and the one-off La Voiture Noire. Bugatti isn't out of cars to build, however. It's now shifting its focus to wrapping up production of the sold-out Chiron and it also needs to build the 99 planned examples of the Mistral (its last street-legal W16-powered model) and 40 units of the track-only, 1,824-horsepower Bolide.