Next-Gen Bugatti Hypercar Is So Advanced It Needed A New Factory

The French car brand needs a new home. The existing home of the brand on the grounds of the Château Saint Jean in Molsheim that has represented Bugatti since the estate was purchased by Ettore himself in 1928 is no longer sufficient. So it will be moving to a new building (Bugatti uses the fancy French "atelier" to describe its workshop) built on the same grounds as the existing facility.

Bugatti Still Lives On Its Historic French Home Estate
You probably haven't seen the Château Saint Jean in person, but it has featured prominently in the brand's marketing images over the past two decades. The home was built in 1857 by the Wangen de Geroldseck family, and buying it back from the post-Ettore owners (in a decrepit state) was one of the first acts by former Volkswagen boss Ferdinand Piëch when he decided to relaunch the brand.

Obviously, Bugatti isn't building cars in the house. The cars are built in an atelier, or workshop, around the back. It's a 57-acre site, so there's plenty of room. Ettore's own factory is now part of French aerospace company Safran (they build landing gear there), so Bugatti built a new one in the early 2000s. Copies of the revolutionary Veyron 16.4 started to roll out not long after.

The new workshop is a structure more in keeping with the brand. Bugatti says that it will be a low and expansive design, slowly rising from the meadowlands where it is located. They mean seriously slowly rising, as the sloping side means 30% of the roof of the structure will grow wild grass.

At 433 feet by just 82, this is a tiny building by car plant standards. That's just under an acre in size, while Volkswagen's plant in Wolfsburg has a production floor of nearly 400 acres. But the cars coming out of this atelier will be far more profitable – and infinitely more desirable.

Glass walls will make it brighter inside and more pleasant for workers, as well as nicer for well-heeled visitors who come to see their cars. It will bring in a new generation of manufacturing and workflow, allowing Bugatti to double its production.

For Bugatti, the factory is more than just a factory, which is why it won't tear down the existing atelier. That building, which is made in the shape of Bugatti's oval "Macaron" emblem, will get a new purpose.

That building will morph into something of a grand showroom, where the boutique supercar company can introduce current and potential customers to the Bugatti lifestyle. By that, we mean the world of million-dollar machines built to customers' whims, showing them what it can do with leather, composite, and other automotive materials. In theory, Bugatti will make them feel like the millions they're about to spend on a car they will have to wait years to get. If it manages to do that, even just a few times, this building will have paid for itself.