Bugatti’s Strategy of One-Off Supercars
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
>"The clientele between Bentley and Bugatti is remarkably different," Bentley CEO and Bugatti president Wolfgang Duerheimer told Bloomberg. "The Bentley customer on average owns 8 cars. The average Bugatti customer has about 84 cars, 3 jets and one yacht."
The lifetime of these cars is pretty limited, the Veyron no longer is where it is at, it is an old car but not a classic old car, it just says 'eugh' to some people that have seen it before. A technical marvel when new, now quite passe.
The Bugatti brand value is an interesting exercise in make believe. It is a revived brand, there is no common heritage. But they pretend there is and nobody points out the flaw to this thinking. At least VW's Lamborghini brand is a bit more credible, there is some thread between the old and the new. The Lamborghini style is spot on for consistent lineage, with Bugatti they have to have the horseshoe grill even though it makes no sense from an aero or other engineering relevant reason.
In theory VW could bring out a 'Tucker' car and pretend that there was some link between the three headlamped effort their designer comes up with and the original:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_48
They could sell the thing with faux American heritage and have it churned out of their Slovakia plant with a few Bentleys. If there was novelty in it people would buy it just because nobody else had one yet.
Meanwhile MacLaren are making cars that are ageing gracefully. There is no fake heritage and there is no horseshoe grill or other legacy novelty that goes with resuscitating a badge engineered image. They are also in the business of doing extremely expensive one off projects but that seems okay as the tech filters down to the cars affordable by lesser multimillionaires.
Returning to VW, the original brand proposition was 'the people's car', something that could bring motoring to the masses. Plenty of other marques had this starting point. But right now we need some reinvention of that with some humble electric car. I think something could be put together with enough range to get you to work and to the train station for longer treks, with a modest sized battery, super-capacitor and humble seats for less cost than a cheap hatchback. But we haven't had that, we keep getting these absurdly expensive cars that are not for the masses.
That for me is perhaps the purest example of people selling 'status'
And if so, why am I breathing in their exhaust or involuntarily at increased risk with their driving?
Personally I'm much more concerned about the 100s of diesel powered buses that run 24/7 across cities such as London, and the huge amount of particulate pollutants they emit into our lungs.
People are already discouraged from driving private vehicles in London during the week with the £10 congestion charge, which along with parking prices, makes it too expensive to drive to work in Central London for the vast majority of workers.
In other words, I don't believe removing buses would increase cars. So our problem is really the buses, and they are very dirty (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-38157860).
I think the problem is that there are still cars on the road, which means the bus service (even dirty) should go to even more places and have more flexible schedules
The entire purpose of regulations would fall apart if anyone that wanted could exempt themselves.
I disagree with systems that allow the wealthy to opt-out of regulations that exist for the benefit of all.
In the U.K there are regulations and processes for checking the road worthyness and safety for all of the above: https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-registration and http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1986/1078/contents/made
Furthermore, an OS with only one or only few users would have to go through a lot of extra testing compared to the free testing that "popular software" companies are getting.
But your comment made me think about why there isn't much going on in luxury computing. As in: where are the raytraced photorealistic nvidia DGX games. Probably too small of a market but I don't know. Do rich people play a lot of games? Or do they rather prefer real life because they have the resources?
50% sales tax? How does that happen?
I think the kind of people buying $13 million cars often neither know nor care about the state of the world outside their bubble of luxury.
The idea that they get money for nothing and spend it all on luxuries is very misguided.
We have no shortage of good ideas or socially useful things to do. What we have is a problem with getting funding for these useful pursuits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
In this case there are probably some highly skilled people involved who were able to increase their know-how (doing research to make the car somehow be xxM$ worth) thanks to being funded by whoever bought the car, but the whole exercise generates probably very little intellectual value outside of this context.
Why do you assume that the R&D required to produce this vehicle is somehow wasted effort?
Someone with less money than you could say the same thing about a lot of your purchases from your discretionary income. The people paying for a $13m Bugatti are likely spending a lot in taxes which is generally how society has agreed upon people benefiting society through their spending. You could argue for higher taxes but that probably doesn't impact much spending for these people who own 80+ cars and have $13m+ to buy a car with.
I hate this argument of "I could have done something better with x", it's reeks of authoritarianism. Yes, there is a better way to spend money, if you decide what "better" means, which you don't, because it's not your money.
Taus are boring. Be dark eldar and enjoy the good stuff in life.
Hardtimes satire.
Or maybe you can realize that moralizing about what other people do with their own money is the absurd and obscene thing.
There may come a time in the future where Bugatti makes cars that aren't even drivable. It won't matter. People will still buy them. They could make an engine block out of solid gold and sell it and people would buy it just for the novelty.
But hey, that’s how you know it’s art. Two people can look at the same object and think the same thing for two different reasons.
Blocking cookies is the better option if you want images.
You start playing the game of “this is an insane decadence that means the world is broken!” and the logic falls apart quickly.
The comparison that makes sense to me : Why would one person, just because they can, buy 20 million dollars worth of coffee, when a $5 cup would do, while others are in need around them, and then not even drink it all.
Many, most of these cars like this end up sitting in a massive garage somewhere, with the owners other 80 cars. Most Bugatti owners have 80+ cars.
Don't get me wrong, I think these things are engineering marvels too. I'm just asking the question how far do we go with it? What is the right supercar vs. Basic humanitarian aid ratio?
IOW, as you get to this level of wealth, you improve the lives of the others who provided you products and services. Does it really matter to you that much what this person then chooses to do with their accumulated cash?
How is buying the car worse than, say, a single person winning a $13M lottery? Would you complain about that?
It's possible that amount is zero, if they're just spending their parents' money. Plenty of multi-generational wealth sitting around.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-...
> In 2004, we had 59% of the Forbes 400 having made their own fortune, as opposed to 41% who inherited it. But, again, at the extremes we still saw a full one-tenth of the list, or 40 of them, having fully inherited their fortunes and not working to grow it, and only 4.75% of them, or 19, as totally self-made, having battled adversity to reach the top.
> Thus, the most encouraging results come from this year’s Forbes 400. For the first time in our data set, we see the number of self-made billionaires who rose from nothing, and overcame various tough obstacles, outpacing those that just sat on their fortunes. A total of 34 billionaires, or 8.5%, scored as 10s, or more than three times as many as in 1984. The number of 100% inherited fortunes as a percentage of the total fell to 7%, with 28 billionaires in the 1 category, compared to 99 back in 1984.
There's a higher chance these days someone spending millions on a car is some sort of "job creator", but it's by no means guaranteed. The supercar set may lean more towards Saudi oil wealth sort of folks, as well.
In my experience those folks are less flashy than the folks driving these around.
No "complaining" here. I'm pointing out the fact that a 13 million dollar supercar is a great object to point at to highlight income disparities and our apathy towards them. It has spawned some good discussion from which I have learned.
And when someone pays for one of these cars, he does pay for the education and medical bills of everyone involved in making this car.
These cars are not made from blood diamonds and the skin of endangered species. They are made by well paid, highly skilled workers and engineers. And they are proud of what they are doing.
I think we can agree that they are on occasion paid for with such though.
Excellent point re: providing for the folks who make it. You're right.