Bugatti Veyron as a daily driver?

[northwest monkey]

soad said:

dowahdiddyman said:

Might be being a bit/lot thick here, but why do you have to change the wheels all the bleedin time, thought it was supposed to be the mutts nuts, top quality etc.

Because it's a very fast car?

Plenty of very fast cars about (albeit not that fast) but I don't hear about Murcielago owners changing their wheels every few thousand miles.

I've no doubt these cars are incredibly expensive to maintain, but a lot of figures bandied around must be part of the legend and myth of the car.

It's not just this car either - I'm sure I read once a rear bumper for an F40 cost around £20k plus fitting and the fuel tanks were about £10k and needed replacing every few years.

A big Euromillions win would see me in a Veyron, but only if it had a proper (not Warranty Direct) warranty from VW!

[Tango13]

northwest monkey said:

>snip<

Plenty of very fast cars about (albeit not that fast) but I don't hear about Murcielago owners changing their wheels every few thousand miles.

Ben Rich went on record that the constant heating and cooling cycles on the Habu's resulted in a stronger airframe, similar to what the Veyrons' wheels will have to tolerate.

Personaly I think it's a good way for VW to re-coup their losses by charging ££££ for new wheel, bearing in mind a fully machined forged aluminium motorcycle wheel from the likes of PVM cost about £700...


Unless of course the Veyron runs Magnesium wheels in which case all of the above is bks and they need changing 'cos Mag wheels on the road have a finite life.

[ChemicalChaos]

northwest monkey said:

It's not just this car either - I'm sure I read once a rear bumper for an F40 cost around £20k plus fitting and the fuel tanks were about £10k and needed replacing every few years.

F40 tanks were a flexible kevlar bag for weight saving and crash safety. As such, they became brittle with age and needed changing.

[Stinkfoot]

Pesty said:

s p a c e m a n said:

Just tried Ebay

0 results found for veyron alternator

It's probably off a passat

Just get one off Europarts and use your friendly local grease monkey to fit it for a 10th of the price

[type-r]

I would be intrigued to know what HR Owen are asking for a 70km Veyron? £500k? (Based on a new GS price of £1.2m).

And also what type of buyer would this car attract? Obviously someone with deep pockets but do you go into it knowing you need around a £300k slush fund.

Edited by type-r on Monday 10th March 08:29

[northwest monkey]

type-r said:

And also what type of buyer would this car attract? Obviously someone with deep pockets but do you go into it knowing you need around a £300k slush fund.

Edited by type-r on Monday 10th March 08:29

I often think that - is there someone out there who wants a Veyron, but wants a cheap one?

I await the "Barge Bargains £500k - £750k Volume 1" thread.

[veevee]

Making a loss - they would have made a loss of however much if they made the amount of cars they initially said they would (was it 30?).

They have now made hundreds, so I doubt they've made a loss overall.

[Fun Bus]

ChemicalChaos said:

northwest monkey said:

It's not just this car either - I'm sure I read once a rear bumper for an F40 cost around £20k plus fitting and the fuel tanks were about £10k and needed replacing every few years.

F40 tanks were a flexible kevlar bag for weight saving and crash safety. As such, they became brittle with age and needed changing.

Some owners are now replacing the bags with aluminium tanks instead.

[Talksteer]

yzrh said:

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/smart-f...
The source for the loss on each car being Bernstein Research.


For the rest you only need a double digit IQ to realise that the only certain source of after sales income to limit losses per car is on the servicing, deliveries, parts, etc.

And if you are wondering why they are limiting losses approaching £4m per car, being a subsidiary of a Frankfurt listed international company, then you probably didn't meet the double digit IQ criteria.

I was well aware of that report, however there is no published data on which their findings are made:

However this artile is more interesting:

http://www.businessinsider.com/bugatti-may-lose-6-...

Quotes:

• Take that number with a big grain of salt. The authors of the report warn, "Don't take these numbers too seriously," explaining that their estimates "are obviously very, very approximate."

• A spokesperson for Bugatti said the company does not supply financial data, but added, " The quoted figures of Bernstein Research are not plausible."

Note back to my original post, at the start of the project they had a sales target of ~300 at a cost of £1 million each. The immediately scales all the project costs there is no way that your losses can exceed the total original value of the project which includes delivering all the cars. You don't accidentally spend £1.2billion on it (£3million loss per car, plus the £300 million of sales). This isn't a public infrastructure project, you'd simply stop work when it became clear that your losses were only going to go up.

I also fail to see how the Veyron could possibly deliver £1.4 billion in value to VW. As an advertising platform it is very tenuously connected to other VW products and I've never seen an advert attempting to connect it. VW probably spend in the region of £2-4 billion pa on advertising so the Bugatti would represent a fairly high portion of that budget even if spread over 7-8 yers.

In terms of R&D I fail to see how the Veyron is in anyway worth the purported £1.4 billion. It doesn't appear to be trailing any new technology, it either uses parts from the existing VW parts bin or expensive bespoke items that will never have applications in their mainstream cars. This isn't the BMW I3 or the Mercedes S Class. If they wanted to research high speed cars or similar 2-3 prototypes would suffice.

[0a]

northwest monkey said:

I often think that - is there someone out there who wants a Veyron, but wants a cheap one?

I await the "Barge Bargains £500k - £750k Volume 1" thread.

One day! The veryron is my kind of supercar as it's a bit barge like in nature. The costs seem a little, well, unpalatable, and I don't think I could ever hand over a credit card for a pair of wheels at the mileage no matter how many billions I had in the bank (my dad was a Yorkshireman). I'll stick with my 165k mile merc w124 for now

[kev b]

You might think that such an engineering show piece would have a wheel life indicator similar to the BMW service indicator which compares cold starts against mileage to calculate when an oil change is due.

A device that compares speed, wheel acceleration/braking g-force, suspension movement etc to assess wheel fatigue should not be too difficult to do but of course that would cut the number of wheels VW could sell.

[Talksteer]

kev b said:

You might think that such an engineering show piece would have a wheel life indicator similar to the BMW service indicator which compares cold starts against mileage to calculate when an oil change is due.

A device that compares speed, wheel acceleration/braking g-force, suspension movement etc to assess wheel fatigue should not be too difficult to do but of course that would cut the number of wheels VW could sell.

I suspect they are more worried about Sheikh Al-Macwhatever banging the wheels up a Mayfair curb than any stresses imposed by actual driving.

Either way what they actually do is a dye-penetrant/ultrasound test to look for cracks in the wheels and then replace them if cracks are found.

I suspect a wheeel re-furb would represent better value though as I suspect the crack inspection would actually cost more than the cost of a re-furb.

I suppose the thing to remember about the Veyron operating costs is that the owners of these vehicles essentially want to be driving around in a new car. Hence those servicing costs are based around everything being continuously repaired and reconditioned to as new condition.

If you attempted to run virtually any car that way it would cost a fortune, these people are doing things like bare metal re-sprays every few years. I would love to be able to run my TVR that way but alas the millions aren't rolling in.