Le Journal

Wrecked Chiron Pur Sport is being rebuilt outside Bugatti’s control. Factory repairs were quoted as high as $1.7 million in France. Bugatti restricts parts sales unless repairs happen at headquarters. Only 60 units of the Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport were ever made, each one a rare specimen priced from around $3.6 million when new, and that’s before ticking any option boxes. Today, some used examples fetch well over $6 million. With numbers like that, you might expect every part to be engineered exclusively for this car. That’s not entirely the case. Read: Bugatti Wanted $16K For A Switch, I Fixed It For The Price Of A Pack Of Gum Last year, one of the rare Chiron Pur Sport’s to call the US home was seriously damaged in a front-end collision. The owner, influencer Alex Gonzalez, received a payout from his insurer and later repurchased the wrecked car at a Copart auction for just under $1.9 million. Now, with YouTuber Mat Armstrong in tow, he’s attempting a full rebuild. Mat Armstrong / YouTube Bugatti initially stepped in with an official repair quote: $1.7 million to restore the car at its Molsheim headquarters. Eventually, that estimate dropped to somewhere between $600,000 and $700,000. Still, the job required shipping the car to France, something Gonzalez wasn’t interested in. Instead, he opted for a more hands-on approach, keeping the project stateside in Miami and working alongside Armstrong. Can You Fix a $5M Hypercar? In the first episode of what’s likely to become an extensive YouTube series, Armstrong started to strip down the Chiron, removing all of the damaged components. But because Bugatti won’t sell spare components unless the car is physically at its facility, the duo will have to improvise. A set of replacement headlights, for instance, comes in at a staggering $150,000 from Bugatti. Finding someone to repair the cracked originals is the far cheaper route. Borrowed Parts and Shared DNA The airbags used are particularly intriguing. If Bugatti were handling the repair, it would use the same airbags the car came with, no doubt with a significant premium attached. Also: Servicing And Maintaining A Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport Costs A Fortune But, after looking at the part numbers of the Bugatti’s knee airbags, as well as the front passenger airbag, Armstrong discovered that they’re identical to the airbags of an Audi A3, available for less than $50 each. He also found that the steering wheel airbag is the same part as an Aston Martin DB11. Bugatti is, of course, part of the VW Group, so parts-sharing isn’t entirely unexpected. Still, when you’re spending the cost of a small island on a hypercar, finding out it shares safety components with a hatchback might leave you with mixed feelings.

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