This past weekend, French car manufacturer Bugatti revealed a new model: Called the Centodieci—Italian for 110—it is both a means of commemorating the brand’s 110th birthday and a means of demonstrating inspiration from a notable vehicle in the marque’s past. The original Bugatti brand lasted from 1909 until the death of its founder, Ettore Bugatti, in 1947. A few different efforts at reviving the nameplate were attempted in the midcentury era, but none really took root until Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli purchased the rights to the brand in the late 1980s and hired a dream team of designers and engineers to produce what he expected would be the fastest car in the world.
The result was the original EB110, a screaming wedge of absurdity. Unveiled in 1991, named to celebrate the 110th birthday of Ettore, outfitted with a quad-turbocharged 12-cylinder motor sitting just behind the driver and an all-wheel-drive system putting power to all four wheels, it out-accelerated and outran all of its competitors. Fewer than 140 EB110s were produced between 1991 and 1995 when this incarnation of the Bugatti brand perished.
This new car pays tribute to that one. It is constructed over the outrageously sophisticated mechanicals that underpin the brand’s Chiron and Divo production vehicles, as well as its $19 million one-off La Voiture Noire: a giant 16-cylinder motor. But the Centodieci not only puts out 100 more horsepower than its already irrepressible brethren, for 1,600 total, it also has a unique body that echoes, but does not slavishly mimic, features from the EB110.
It has modern echoes of that car’s close-set headlamps, solid flanks, triple-split front grille, lozenge-rounded taillamps, and low and narrow “horseshoe” grille opening on the nose. It also has one of that vintage car’s most iconic features, a diamond of five circular air intakes behind the side windows, meant to feed oxygen to the immense motor amidships. But it accomplishes all of this in a fresh, nodding way, one that avoids historical pastiche.
“This was our main concern, not being retro,” says Bugatti design head Frank Heyl. “The Centodieci starts low to the ground and ends higher in the rear end, a stance that connects it to the EB110 as being aggressively moving forward, and to the fashion of Nineties supercars, with a ‘wedge’ shape that was popular then. But it does it in a fresh, modern way.”
The Centodieci will be built in an extremely limited edition. Just 10 cars are planned, each at a base price of $9 million. Though this high seven-figure price tag is astronomical, it may be a good long-term investment. Original EB110s have seen rapid increases in price in recent years, increasing from just over $300,000 in 2011 to well over $2.3 million in a recent sale. Unfortunately, for those of you with $9 million burning a hole in your pocket, these cars are all already sold. “They sold in just weeks,” says Heyl. First customer deliveries of these cars are expected in 2022.
