Italian firm Ferrari da Varese wants to sell you an officially licensed $15,000 pen dubbed the Bugatti Type A. It features something called a "writing engine" and contains both palladium and sapphire glass. Ettore, we're sorry.
Forgive us for saying so, but for all the Bugatti Veyron's mightiness, it has never really seemed like . . . well, like a Bugatti. Maybe we grew up reading too much Griff Borgeson, L'ebe Bugatti, and Automobile Quarterly, but a fat, distant, and only marginally attractive supercar — no matter how world-beating its performance — doesn't seem to fall in line with the erudite principles that the Molsheim marque was built upon. And now we have this: A $15,000, Bugatti-branded pen that harks back to Le Patron's famed perfectionism but also reminds us that we live in a wholly different, less romantic age. Le sigh.
No matter. While we have spent a bit of time around Bugattis, both old and new, we are not the target market, and our opinion does not matter. The target market often spends $15,000 on after-dinner drinks, and we are still figuring out how to live in Northern California and buy lunch at the same time. The target market could buy and sell us and our entire family six times before breakfast. And the tarket market wants a pen made of aluminum but plated in nickel, silver, palladium, and platinum. It wants a "nib viewing window" made of sapphire glass and a "calibrated" ruby stone on the back of the cap. If you want one, then you likely already have one. And if you have one, then you are probably rich enough to pay people to surf the Internet for you.
You there! The Hispano-Suiza needs polishing! Pick up the children in the helicopter and ferry them out to the Hamptons! And stop playing around on that silly blog! (Hat tip to Justin!)