And while some of these marques may produce models that compete against each other, each seems to be profitable enough in its own right to justify its existence. But what about Bentley and Bugatti? Surely these marques cater to the same customers, right?
Not according to their shared CEO. "The clientele between Bentley and Bugatti is remarkably different," said Wolfgang Dürheimer in an interview with Bloomberg. "The Bentley customer on average owns 8 cars. The average Bugatti customer has about 84 cars, 3 jets and 1 yacht."
That may be a slight exaggeration (we'd have expected three yachts and one jet), but it puts things into perspective: Bentleys are for the one percent. Bugattis are for the one percent of that one percent. Which only goes to show why it's taken Bugatti over eight years to sell 450 Veyrons – a number of units it would take Bentley about two weeks to move, albeit at about one tenth the price.
With only about 20 units left to go, the Veyron is about to roar off into the sunset, after which Bugatti will introduce its replacement sometime late next year or early in 2016. The Alsatian marque is reportedly working on three different versions, and the final design – thanks in no small part to a hybrid assist – is expected too pack some 25 percent more power than the 8.0-liter quad-turbo W16 in the current Veyron, which produces 987 horsepower in standard form and 1,184 hp in the Super Sport and Vitesse models.
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