Marketing Manager - Bridge Classic Cars
There always seems to be a story floating around the automotive industry of another record being broken for the most expensive car, the rarest car, and so on. However, every now and again, a truly staggering amount of money is paid for an exceptionally rare car…and that’s exactly what happened recently.
The Car
The Bugatti Chiron Profilée is a one-of-one hypercar.
Bugatti had planned to make a very limited number of special edition Chirons called the Profilée. This was going to be a slightly tamer version of the Pur Sport making it better suited to road driving as opposed to racing it around a track.
In the end though, the Chiron Profilée was never to be. As Bugatti had set a limit of only producing 500 Chirons, they proved to be popular enough to reach this threshold before the Profilée could be brought into existence.
That is with the exception of one Bugatti Chiron Profilée that was made as a prototype of sorts. This Profilée is the only one ever to exist. Despite being based on the Pur Sport, the Profilée has a long list of features that are unique to this one particular vehicle including its suspension and steering tune.
The top speed is 236mph which is actually slower than the standard Chiron which can reach speeds of up to 261mph. That being said, the Profilée can go from 0 – 186mph in 12 seconds so it is by no means a slouch!
The Price
RM Sotheby’s hosted the auction in Paris where this one-of-a-kind car was up for sale.
The bidding at the invite-only auction was said to be an “extended contest between a number of collectors in the room, on the telephones, and via the internet” but, eventually, the winning bid was placed and the new owner of this entirely unique car had paid €9,792,500 (approximately £8.7 million).
To put that into perspective, the Bugatti Chiron Profilée now holds the record for the most expensive new vehicle ever bought (zero owners on the registration document).
The pre-sale estimate for the Profilée was €4.2 million to €5.5 million so the bidding war certainly appears to have been pretty intense.
The End Of An Era?
Although Bugatti has not officially confirmed their plans for the future, they have appeared to hint that the Profilée could be the last of the W16 series.
If this is confirmed at a later date, the Chiron Profilée seems a fitting swan song for this thunderous engine.
Either way, a new record has been set, the one-of-one Bugatti Chiron Profilée is the most expensive new car ever sold at auction. That’s a record that will take a very special car to beat!
