Car Throttle

One of the things I like about my “real” job is that I get to travel a bit within the US, and have spent many trips in LA. Last time on my way out, I was perusing through the latest edition of DuPont Registry, or Playboy for car nerds, when I saw that there was a Bugatti dealership located not too far away from where I was staying.

Well, it turns out I had a free morning, so I decided to point the rental car in the direction of the dealership on the off chance that I could cast my eyes on probably the most insane car ever made.

After several miles of LA traffic, I pulled up onto Olympic Ave and into O’Gara Coach Company, who have dealership agreements with Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Bentley and, my target for the day, Bugatti.

And was I rewarded…

I walked in through the door to be greeted by not one, but two Bugatti Veyrons. One in black and red, and one all black. It is really quite a curvy little thing. I love the huge logos on the rear, the gas cap, steering wheel, and the engine block. The engine.

That thing is just sitting there, out in the elements. I love the aluminum air scoops sitting above the roof with beautifully detailed grills, purposefully sucking air into those quad turbos.

It looks very business like. The detail around the gas cap is ridiculous, which have 6 allen screw heads. The black one had the spoiler up just for effect, but the craftsmanship of the struts on that was enough to warrant further inspection.

The red one had beautiful cream leather interior with the center console delicately milled to give a lovely texture in the middle of the swath of cream.

The darker, more caramel leather in the black car was highlighted with the same center console showing off the very high levels of machining.

Again, like most supercars, its a lot smaller in the flesh than you would think, and the asking prices were of course astronomical, with the red one as chassis number 1 of 300 at a cool $2.399million.

It’s totally fantasy money, and the hilarious thing is that I walked out of there and didn’t even look at the black Lamborghini Murcielago Roadster that was parked behind it, or even cast a glance at the Bentley, Ferrari and Rolls Royce collection parked around it.

It was a lot of fun, and while I may not have had the chance to drive the horseshoe grill, it was good to get a chance to see the car in the flesh. I need to make a trip to the McLaren dealership in London next time I’m over there.