The only place you can buy a Bugatti Chiron is suitably posh
After its Goodwood Festival of Speed dynamic debut, the world’s fastest-car-in-waiting has arrived in the capital, the Bugatti Chiron taking up residence in its own new bijou showroom in super-luxuryland, aka Mayfair. GRR went along to the opening ready to be impressed…
Bijou is definitely the right word for the only place in the UK to see, and buy, the new Chiron. Bugatti London is part of the H R Owen luxury car dealer group, and to create the showroom they have knocked through from next door – itself one of London’s most famous car showrooms, Jack Barclay Bentley in Berkeley Square. The result is a long and narrow, single-car space (Bugatti doesn’t have a large range…) with its own discreet entrance on Bruton Street.
It is in this impeccably refined area, lit with Bugatti blue, that the UK’s mega rich will sit on armchairs made from the same leather and carbon-fibre as feature in the car to ponder their colour and trim options. And then whipping out the chequebook and writing 2,400,000 in the box – that’s in euros, so for people spending pounds the Chiron is roughly 10 per cent more expensive since the Brexit vote. Options are expected to add €300,000 – say, the price of a top Bentley Bentayga from the showroom next door – to each car.
Not that any of this is putting buyers off. Of the 500 Chirons to be made – at the rate of one a week for the next eight years – 200 already have names next to them and of those orders 15 are from UK buyers. No media or customer has yet driven the car but will be soon, ahead of first deliveries expected this autumn.
Selling the Chiron in the UK is the job of H R Owen’s Bugatti director Anita Krizsan. Anita is a global superstar in Bugatti’s world, twice being salesperson of the year – in 2013 alone she sold a dozen new and pre-owned Veyrons. There are thought to be 65 Veyrons in the UK (out of 450 made).
The black Chiron in the showroom is unusual in being one colour all over, when we are used to seeing Bugattis in the distinctive two-tone paint job that nine out of 10 Veyrons featured. The same car that Andy Wallace drove at FoS, the black beast’s promo tour takes it to Gstaad in Switzerland next, but Anita is hopeful of getting another soon. And, yes, people are welcome to go in and have a look at the car. “With Bugatti it’s not just about selling,” Anita tell us. "It’s about sharing our passion and entertaining people.”
Some of the very first people to see the Chiron in the new London showroom were in fact a family who made the trip to FOS to see the car – but who never made it inside Goodwood (the road had been blocked because of an accident). Anita heard how disappointed they were – and invited them to the showroom for a private viewing.
Bugatti
Chiron
H R Owen
