In 1998, Volkswagen bought the rights to the Bugatti brand from the bankrupted Italian firm that had given us the V12-engined EB110 supercar.
Seven years and more than €1 billion later, we drove a Veyron for the first time. It was the fastest and most powerful production car the world had ever seen, by quite some margin, and it hit, if not exceeded, all of the targets that had been set – except for cost, because there was no constraint on that, and, despite it retailing for €1 million, Volkswagen allegedly lost €5m on each one. Or rather company supremo Ferdinand Piëch lost it, because the Veyron was his car through and through.
The idea only came to fruition because his attitude was: “You will get it done, and if you can’t, you will be replaced by someone who can,” according to Chrysler chief Bob Lutz. But then the Veyron was never meant to be a money-making exercise.
In our final issue of 1998, Peter Robinson commented: “Without Piëch’s astonishing assault into car territories once beyond the wildest fantasy of staid old VW, the task of writing Autocar’s weekly Grapevine column in 1998 would have been much harder.”
Indeed, Piëch had tried to buy Rolls-Royce, Volvo Trucks, BMW, Cosworth, Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti all in that year, succeeding with the last four and setting about planning a sprawling new model range using monstrous engines.
The world had its first glimpse of Veyron madness at the 1998 Paris motor show: the EB118, an ostentatious coupé concept with a 555bhp 6.3-litre W18 engine that “arose from a simple sketch [Piëch had] made on a serviette during a dinner”.
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At the 1999 Geneva motor show, even while Volkswagen’s W12-engined Syncro supercar was still on the cards, Bentley revealed an 8.0-litre W18 supercar of its own and Bugatti the EB218 concept, a saloon version of the EB118.
The intention was for the brand to return to the market position it had enjoyed in its original pre-war form, so “Volkswagen insiders were buoyed that the Mercedes team developing their own limousine, the Maybach, awarded the EB218 ‘benchmark’ status after visiting Bugatti’s stand”, we reported.
This was shortly followed by the 18/3 Chiron and 18/4 Veyron supercar concepts, which were much closer in style to what we know today.
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