Bugatti Backs Down?

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

With Maybach folding up its tent after an uninspired campaign to unseat Rolls Royce at the top of the luxury sedan heap, only Bentley and Bugatti remain as potential challengers to the Phantom ( Geely doesn’t count). Bentley has always had a slight inferiority complex when comparisons to Rollers come up, and though the new Mulsanne offers an alternative to the Phantom, it won’t replace it as the undisputed champion of four-door luxury. No, it seems as though the Volkswagen Group is trying to bracket BMW’s Phantom, with the Mulsanne nipping at its heels, and the Bugatti Galibier concept indicating what on might purchase in order to put all the Phantom owners in their place. It might not be as purely luxurious as the Rolls, but the Bugatti name, the 800 HP and the Galibier’s dramatically opulent looks have the potential to yield an icon capable of unsettling the high-end, four-door order of things. But will it be built? According to Autocar‘s Bugatti sources:

It will be made one way or the other.. We’re the smallest VW Group member and there’s a recession on so we’ve not been a priority. But we can expect to announce something by the summer; it looks good, people like it and it wouldn’t be a great financial commitment in the context of the Group.

But evo Magazine’s Harry Metcalfe says it ain’t so. The Galibier, he says, is over, and with it Bugatti’s ambition to build the world’s most powerful and expensive four-door.

According to Metcalfe, who is known to have friends inside Bugatti (apparently owning 14 cars and an $11k annual insurance premium helps with this), the Galibier was well-received in in the US and Middle East, but potential European customers found it “rather too upright and unremarkable.” As a result, Metcalfe reports that Bugatti is ditching the four-door design for a coupe, which, he argues, would make a better Veyron replacement anyway.

The confusing part? Metcalfe writes in the April issue of evo

Bugatti has gone back to the drawing board and decided to create an exciting, all-black, coupe version of the Galibier, which is being given its world premiere at an invitation-only presentation on the eve of the Geneva show.

Sure enough, pictures of an all-black Bugatti were released at Geneva, but they’re of the four-door Galibier. Huh? With Autocar and evo telling different stories, it’s hard to know what’s actually happening at Bugatti. Perhaps they realized that a sporting Rolls alternative (in the Mulsanne) and a hyper-sporting Rolls-beater in the Galibier was a bridge too far. In either case, and at least for now, the Phantom seems safe in its place as the most status-bestowing four-door on the market.


Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Newcarscostalot Newcarscostalot on Mar 28, 2010

    It looks angry, as if it wishes to consume Chevy Aveos and other lesser vehicles for lunch.

  • Ingvar Ingvar on Mar 28, 2010

    They will never reach parity with RR as long as they keep building on those Panamera underpinnings. The car is so very obviously based on a Panamera, and that's what those picky Europeans are complaining about. Who in their right minds would buy a guzzied up Porsche at ten times the price?

  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.
  • ToolGuy Ford is good at drifting all right... 😉
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