Bugatti Shows The Alternative Realities Of The Chiron

You probably won’t be able to get into Bugatti’s ultra-exclusive two-day brand history seminar. That party will have speakers touching on topics from the brand’s founding and its champions over the years to in-depth looks at its greatest designs. The 16 people who will pay roughly $3,000 to attend the event will even get to hear more about the convicted fraudsters who had the largest collection of Bugattis in existence and are probably the reason the company still exists today. For the rest of us, the Molsheim-based marque has revealed some early design proposals for the Bugatti Chiron, a hypercar that took eight long years to develop, along with other studies and even a real vehicle that we have never seen before.

Early Models Look At Bugatti’s Direction For The Chiron

Just three years after the Bugatti Veyron stunned the world with its 987 horsepower quad-turbo W16 engine and 254 mile-per-hour top speed, the reborn car company was hard at work on a successor. The 1:4 clay models Bugatti has revealed ahead of its seminar show various takes on the car that would become the Bugatti Chiron.

The French car company considered and workshopped ideas for its hypercar ranging from more of the same model it already had to almost complete re-imaginings of the brand’s look. Some of the models look like they’re not much more than a refresh of the Veyron. Other designs look almost nothing like that car or the Chiron that emerged, with very different takes on the Mosheim-based brand’s signature horseshoe grille. Some even resemble Pagani and Ford supercars, and we know how Bugatti feels about comparison.

Other newly revealed vehicles include a study of a new Bugatti Atlantic, an homage to one of the most iconic Bugatti models of all time. The T35 Racing Vision was a study that took a look at a hyper-futuristic GT racing car, and Bugatti revealed a rendering of another in the same vein, the Vision GT Proposal from 2014. Bugatti also revealed a new image of the T35 Homage of 2018, an open-wheel car designed by Walter da Silva as a modern look at the classic Type 35 race car of 1924.

Bugatti is revealing the composite image of these scale models to promote that seminar. It will take place November 8-9 at the Nationales Automuseum, German entrepreneur Friedhelm Loh’s own car collection turned museum, located in the small German town of Dietzhölztal. Bugatti plans to show previously unseen materials and images from its archives that show the evolution of the brand. This one will be German-language only, with CEO Mate Rimac in attendance. An English version of the seminar is planned for next year. The pricey ticket also gets participants into the museum’s Salle Bugatti, an area not normally open to the public. The Loh Collection’s 150 rare vehicles include some of the most iconic Bugatti models, like a Type 57C Aravais, Type 57C Atalante, and a Type 50S, along with newer models.

Those fraudsters we mentioned at the outset? Brothers Fritz and Hans Schlumpf were textile magnates with close ties to Bugatti’s home in Alsace, France. They accumulated a massive number of cars including more than 100 Bugattis. The kept-in-secret collection was seized by authorities as the brothers fled France for Switzerland ahead of prosecution in 1977. They were later convicted of fraud and embezzlement, taking cash from their company to pay for the car collection.