Record-breaking Bugatti Chiron Profilée sells for £8.7million | GRR
The one-off Bugatti Chiron Profilée has sold for an incredible price at the RM Sotheby’s 2023 Paris sale, crossing the block for £8.7million, or in rough continental parlance, almost €10million... and that's before VAT. Yet even at that, it’s still second to La Voiture Noir, as the most expensive modern Bugatti ever sold.
Junior to the €11million (in 2019) ‘Black Car’ it may be, that figure still puts the Profilée in rarified company, as the most expensive new car ever sold at auction.
As we outlined when the car was revealed, the Profilée is effectively Bugatti giving the Chiron Pur Sport the ‘Touring’ treatment. That’s to say, a reduced rear wing, a more muted spec and slight shift in focus to enthusiastic road driving.
As we know, the heavily cambered, bewinged, short-geared Pur Sport is a Bugatti designed for the track. The Profilée was Bugatti’s idea of a focused road-going sports hypercar. Indeed, it was a package destined for production but time constraints on the life of the W16 platform meant that it never actually made production.
As such, it’ll be one of the last Chirons to reach its loving owner before the line of open-topped Mistrals (and indeed the crazy Bolides) close out the near 20-year W16 era for Bugatti. Not a bad way to wave off a family of cars that set new high bars for power, performance, speed, quality and desirability.
As for what follows the Profilée? We know very little, though CEO Mate Rimac seems excited to show us. Far from a reskinned Rimac Nevera, Bugatti's next cars are to utilise electric power, albeit as a heavy hybrid element augmenting a new and exciting internal combustion engine. We wonder if the highly committed winner of the Profilée will be getting a sneak preview and first dibs…
Images courtesy of RM Sotheby's