The Phantom in Black: From Jean Bugatti’s Lost Atlantic to a Billionaire’s Secret Trophy
Right, so let’s make this tale longer — because the La Voiture Noire isn’t just a car, it’s practically a gothic novel written in carbon fibre and horsepower.
The roots of this story stretch back to Ettore Bugatti, the Italian-born genius who moved to France and founded a brand that became synonymous with aristocratic engineering. Ettore didn’t just build cars; he built objets d’art. His brother Rembrandt sculpted wild animals out of bronze, and Jean Bugatti — Ettore’s son — transformed that same artistic obsession into cars that looked like they had been hand-poured out of melted midnight. The Type 57 SC Atlantic, Jean’s most famous creation, was the automotive Mona Lisa: beautiful, rare, and wrapped in legend. Only four were ever made, and one disappeared before the Second World War. Some say it was hidden away by a wealthy collector, others that it was destroyed during the chaos of the war, but the truth is, no one has ever seen it again. It became a ghost in the Bugatti family’s long lineage.
Enter Achim Anscheidt, Bugatti’s modern design chief, and Stephan Winkelmann, the flamboyant CEO who had previously turned Lamborghini into a theatre of excess. Together they decided to build a car that wasn’t just fast but spectral — a tribute to Jean Bugatti’s lost Atlantic. The result was the La Voiture Noire, revealed at the Geneva Motor Show in 2019. It was not merely painted black; it was draped in exposed, hand-polished carbon fibre that gleamed under the lights like obsidian. It carried under its shimmering body the same mechanical lunacy as the Chiron: a quad-turbo 8.0-litre W16 producing 1,500 horsepower, enough to tow the Eiffel Tower if you really fancied a challenge.
But, of course, the car wasn’t really about performance. Bugatti has plenty of cars that will do 400 km/h while making you spill your champagne. The La Voiture Noire was about mythology. It was about bringing Jean Bugatti’s ghost back from the shadows and offering it, once again, to the world’s wealthiest collectors. And then came the biggest twist: only one would ever be built. Just one. A single machine destined for a single buyer, cloaked in secrecy.
And this is where the rumours began. Who bought it? Some swore it was Ferdinand Piëch, the former Volkswagen chairman, a man who collected exotic machinery like other people collect cufflinks. Others whispered Cristiano Ronaldo had added it to his stable, alongside his assortment of other toys. Then there were stories of Middle Eastern royals, Qatari princes with vaults full of cars that have never turned a wheel. Bugatti never confirmed the buyer, which only deepened the legend. The man, or woman, who bought the La Voiture Noire has remained as elusive as the lost Atlantic itself.
The price? Around €11 million before taxes, which, after all the import duties and whispered dealer fees, probably made it closer to €16 million. To put it in perspective, that’s the GDP of a small Pacific island nation. For one car. And yet it sold instantly, proving that Bugatti’s blend of engineering and theatre still works exactly as Ettore intended.
This isn’t just a car you drive. This is a car you tell stories about at candlelit dinners in villas overlooking Lake Como. It’s the kind of thing you leave hidden away, like the world’s most expensive secret, occasionally rolling it out of its air-conditioned garage so that mechanics in white gloves can gently polish its already immaculate surface.
The La Voiture Noire is, in many ways, a mirror of Bugatti’s entire philosophy. It’s irrational. It’s ludicrous. And it’s entirely magnificent. In a world of hybrids and sustainability, Bugatti built a machine that is a rolling piece of theatre — an automotive ghost story designed to haunt collectors for decades to come.
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