Volkswagen lost 6.24 million with each one it sold

On the walk of fame of luxury supercars, there is a star reserved for a car that, despite the fact that its wealthy buyers had to put 1.7 million dollars on the table to get it from the dealership, every time a unit was sold, its manufacturer lost 6.24 million dollars: the Bugatti Veyron.

Bugatti Veyron: an icon of luxury and speed

The Bugatti Veyron born in 2005 of one ambitious idea: create the fastest, most powerful and luxurious car in the world. And boy did they succeed. Ferdinand Piëch, the visionary architect of the current Volkswagen group and grandson of Ferdinand Porsche himself. The passion for speed and luxury was in his DNA.

This supercar had one of the engines that has given Bugatti the most joy but, unfortunately, in 2024 it became part of the engine history since the brand stopped manufacturing it.

It is about its brutal W16 8.0 liters and four turbos, with which it was capable of accelerating like a rocket and breaking top speed records above 406 km/h. This figure became almost a requirement for the desire for “revenge” of the brand for a speed record at Le Mans.

The name of the Veyron is also closely linked to the Le Mans race, as it pays tribute to the Bugatti driver and engineer. Pierre Veyronwhich in 1939 won the 24 hours of Le Mans with one of the brand’s cars.

The brand took six years in development of the Veyron for the challenge of implementing an engine capable of developing 1,001 HP of power and 1,400 Nm of torque. To keep the temperature of such a beast at bay, engineers had to integrate 10 radiators.

The exclusivity of the Bugatti Veyron was not only noticeable when paying the 1.7 million dollars that it cost each unit. Each set of tires, especially designed for the Veyron by Michelin, cost a whopping $38,000 and had to be replaced every 4,000 km. On the track and at maximum speed, the life of the tires was limited to about 15 minutes before disintegrating. Something that they would rarely do, since the 106 liters of their tank were enough for 12 minutes. Without a doubt, a car with maintenance out of reach of many pockets.

The Veyron wasn’t just about speed. It was also extreme luxury. Every detail, from materials to workmanship, was of the highest quality. Owning a Veyron was like owning a artwork on wheelsa demonstration that you could afford the best of the best. aspire to one of the special editions The Veyron was already another level, and meant paying more than 2.7 million for some of them.

A ruinous business for Volkswagen

But here’s the surprising part: despite its million-dollar selling price, Volkswagen lost money on every Veyron it sold. And not a little, precisely.

As and how they counted in Technology.orgthe Wall Street financial research firm Bernstein Research, published a report in which they claimed that the Volkswagen group lost about $6.24 million for each Bugatti Veyron that was sold. However, the authors of that report later admitted that this figure should be taken with caution because it was based on rough estimates.

Paradoxically, the explanation for this financial fiasco is given by its engineering and design success. Volkswagen spared no expense to create the perfect car and for this They invested 1,620 million of dollars in its development.

The negative part is that Bugatti only sold 450 units of its Veyron in the 10 years it was on sale, so the investment in R&D was greater than what the brand recovered by selling the cars, which turned out to be a financial fiasco.

However, although in absolute terms, the Veyron’s development effort was greater than the income from its sale, the technology that was developed for that engineering gem later served as the basis for the entire a lineage of supercars. His legacy has served to break all speed records one by one until reaching the 490.48 km/h reached by the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ in 2019, as how I collected Car and Driver.

Volkswagen was willing to take those losses because it wanted to demonstrate its ability to create the best supercar in the world. Although the Veyron was not a financial success in itself, it managed to position Bugatti as a reference brand on the map of luxury supercars. A “failure” that, in the end, turned out to be a great triumph, although very expensive.

A version of this article was published in March 2025.

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Image | Unsplash (Vlad Grebenyev)