How to build your own Bugatti

We stepped into the shoes of an ultra-high-net-worth Bugatti client last week, and enjoyed the full private customer experience beans of designing our very own Chiron, sadly via the less-than-luxury experience that is Zoom. Regardless, it was quite an extraordinary experience.

My helping hand for the session, Jascha Straub, is described as the bridge between the customer and the design team, which makes him sound like a posh salesperson, when in fact he’s an accomplished exterior designer for Bugatti, and was heavily involved with penning both the Divo and Centodieci hypercars. So when he gently tries to steer customers from some of their more outlandish suggestions, towards alternatives more suited to the brand, he knows of what he speaks.

In fact, as he guides me through each step of the customisation process on my Chiron Pur Sport, it dawns on me just how many different surfaces, areas, angles and parts go into what at first appears quite a simple, fluid shape. More daunting still, as we tinker with shading and palettes, is that you can see how one false move – the tone of the EB lettering in the wheel hubs, the level of gloss on the engine bay covers, the colour for the famous C-curve of metal behind the B-pillar – can make or break the entire car.

I’m not sure if I’ve ended up with a winner or ghastly aesthetic error, looking at the renderings I’ve been sent of my design. I wanted copper for that mix of the natural world and metallic richness, and the creamy white feels pleasingly girly. I’ll admit, though, that it looks, in retrospect, like I’ve gone for some sort of automotive white-and-tan, 1920s, spats-covered brogues, which I don’t think is what I was after. Although it’s hard to recall what my original vision was, after the 25^th tinkering with the frilly collar bits where the bonnet meets the windscreen. I certainly ran out of puff when we got halfway through the interior, which explains tan individual dashboards. I’m just grateful I don’t have to pay for the result.

You think you’d do better? Here’s how it unfolded (and we didn’t even get on to embroidered headrests or a picture of my yacht engraved in the door panel). We began, I was pathetically grateful to see, with six colour directions to set you off, ranging from that Bugatti blue to black, grey and yellow. We played for a bit with the two-tone options – you can divide the car vertically (as I’ve done) or horizontally (which looked like it was about to go off-roading to me) – plus keeping it in one colour (which I thought would look best, but a bit boring for this article), and Jascha thoughtfully rotated and spun the digital Chiron on its plinth to show all angles.

Then it got tricky. “Which colour for the front and rear grills?” Jascha asked. After considering black – too menacing – and polished silver – too loud – Jascha kindly offered me brown carbon, which handily matched my copper body. Ish. Might have looked bloody awful in the flesh.

A mirror shine on the grill was too much, ditto for the number 16 painted on the front grill (“Brown, please, Jascha. We are not animals”, I said wisely).

Then wing mirrors – a nice horizontal two-tone split worked. But then, my goodness, that curving C line behind the windows that wraps the roof line down, round the body, to the skirts. Copper or white? Every time Jascha changed it, it changed the whole car. I was getting nervous. Eventually I surrendered to the higher power that is Jascha. “You choose”, I said, feebly.

Then the wheel design, followed by wheel colour. “In for a penny”, I cried with abandon, selecting matching copper, before doubling down again with the EB in white – “It’s my initials!” I reasoned with Jascha; he smiled politely but I think we both knew that was a move no paying customer would make.

I could have brake calipers in a unique colour but that would take five months, Jascha warned me. “God lord, Jashca, time is money,” I reasoned as I declined. He nodded sagely.

Then it was sky view panels (or panoramic roof as we call it). I took his point that it would make the interior lighter but it made the roof messy.

A rear wing to match the brown carbon of the grill, and an aluminium surround for the rear lights, a brief flurry of angst over the engine cover (cast metal or polished aluminium?) and onto the interior via quick slurp of coffee. Tough work, this spending-money business.

I have one rule about interiors, which is “light”. Jascha was showing me black leather with various accents in blue and silver. No, not for the likes of me. So we essentially turned the car inside out and gave it the full-on spats treatment inside, although with a darker tan, which may strike some as a bit Nineties but, well, I like. Jascha said he did too. Because he’s very polite.

Further questions about the steering wheel, the metal surrounding the switches on the steering wheel, the stitching on the seats, the doors, the dash, and bish, bash, bosh, mine’s a Chiron. Extraordinary business, being an ultra-high-netter.