While some women in their 70s are content to cruise around in little hatchbacks, and a few find themselves scaling back their at-the-wheel activity altogether, not every female septuagenarian fits that mold. One has just commissioned her very own bespoke Bugatti Chiron Super Sport, a 1,578 hp (1,600 PS) hypercar that’s among the fastest new vehicles on the planet.
Meet the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport ‘57 One of One,’ one of the very last Chirons to be produced before the sold-out supercar goes out of production. As you’ve probably guessed from the name and the presence of the old timer in the lead image, this particular Chiron is a tribute to the legendary Bugatti Type 57 SC Atlantic. The Super Sport’s owner first spotted an original 57 SC 20 years ago and fell in love with the design, which is regularly mentioned in lists of the world’s most beautiful cars. Two decades later her husband surprised her with a trip to Bugatti’s Molsheim base to configure her own Chiron Super Sport, and it sounds like she didn’t have much trouble finding inspiration for the design.
“During her visit, when we passed a scale model of the Type 57 SC – the very first Atlantic and the exact one she had seen all those years ago – there was an immediate spark of recognition between us that this is the direction we should take,” recalls Jascha Straub, Lead Designer Sur Mesure at Bugatti.
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“For years I have been idly dreaming of reinterpreting this icon, so I already had my own ideas of what I would do to honor the most elegant car ever designed. That meant that right away we could sit down and begin evolving the design, to realize her vision together,”
As Bugatti points out, the basic Chiron design already draws heavily from the 57 SC, echoing the pre-war car’s teardrop shape and central bolted spine. But this one-off closes the gap further with a special version of the famous horseshoe grille featuring polished vertical vanes and a thicker central fin, just like on the 1930s car. But the most obvious link is the light blue metallic paint, a perfect copy of the blue used on the 57 SC the customer spied all those years ago. Bugatti flew out to see that car while it was on display at Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum with a color swatch to check for accuracy.
The five-spoke Super Sport wheels also get a mix of blue paint and chrome, just like the classic 57, and the underside of the rear wing features a hand-drawn silhouette of the Atlantic, finished with ‘57’ and ‘One of One’ lettering. The interior, meanwhile, is finished in Gaucho leather and also benefits from blue detailing, a ‘57 One of One’ plaque on the console, and Bugatti’s famous elephant motif on the seatbacks.
