The Bugatti Chiron Sport “110 ans Bugatti” is one of the only cars pulling off blue-on-blue in 2019, which is awesome, but I think the French flag rear spoiler is one of the funnest features I’ve seen on a supercar in a while.
What can I say, I’m a huge sucker for special editions. Maybe I’ll bring that up with my therapist later. Meanwhile, let’s all just drown in the beautifully deep blue carbon the exterior of this car is finished in.
It looks like a cetacean from the rear quarter, and then that wing pops up. Oh, man–to experience the glory of flipping a French flag up at some la pauvre in a Ferrari, who would dare tailgate my Bugatti, before dousing their front bumper in the emissions from four exhaust pipes? That sounds like $3 million worth of fun, sure.
Bugatti’s press release about this car actually goes into surprisingly informative detail about the French flag design, “Le Bleu-Blanc-Rouge,” which I will share with you here:
“The flag originally symbolized the union between monarch and people in the phase of the constitutional monarchy. Since the end of the monarchy, it has represented the French Revolution with its famous ideals of liberty (blue), equality (white) and fraternity (red).”
I feel like there’s some irony in invoking the French Revolution while hawking a $3 million car, but I’m too distracted by all these tones of blue to worry about it. Left unsaid by Bugatti is whether or not the car comes with a guillotine fit just for its owner, but I did find this fact Bugatti included interesting:
“Taking a first look at the Chiron, you may be surprised to see that the colours of the French flag are shown as a mirror image on the right-hand side of the vehicle. This is also the arrangement adopted on French official vehicles, where the standard has the colour of liberty (blue) to the fore on both sides.”
I guess that means French vehicles would put flag emblems on their right side backwards, so it would look like it’s “blowing” with the way wind would be moving across the car, which we also do in the United States. Neat.
For those of you tilting your heads reading this post, thinking “isn’t Bugatti Italian,” actually no, the name certainly sounds Italian, and the company is owned by the German Volkswagen Group, but Bugatti’s headquarters is in Molsheim, France, as is traditional.
Bugatti’s founder Ettore Bugatti (hence the “EB” emblem on the cars), was in fact from Milan, Italy himself and set up shop in Molsheim, in 1909 (hence the “110th anniversary”) to start building cars.
Molsheim is in the north-eastern French region of Alsace which borders Germany and was annexed by Germany around 1870 in the Franco-German war. France got it back after World War I with the Treaty of Versailles, which went into effect in 1920, and then the Germans grabbed it once again for the duration of World War II.
But I think that’s pretty interesting context to consider when looking at Bugatti’s history, and we’re not about to look at a Chiron draped in French flags without talking Bugatti history. The early years of running a car company in Molsheim must have been pretty interesting, what with the region changing nationalities and major wars going on. Can you imagine the paperwork?
Speaking of papers, as in spec sheets, Bugatti’s release does not mention any performance upgrades for this special extra bleu edition. But you’ll probably be able to make do with the car’s standard 1,500 horsepower.
There was no list price either, but apparently only 20 cars will be built. So if you have to ask, maybe you’d better stick to just painting blue, white and red stripes on the tailgate of your Peugeot 505.