My favorite car that I saw at Monterey Car Week this year was the bright orange Bugatti Chiron Super Sport ‘L’Aura’ (French for “the aura”), a super bespoke build that wears a hand-painted “Vagues de Lumière” livery that mimics the way light falls and reflects on the car’s bodywork. It turns out I wasn’t the only one who fell in love with the car, as the owner’s husband decided to have his own Chiron Super Sport refurbished to match her spec.
Bugatti has offered customers the ability to refinish their Veyrons and Chirons for a few years now, with its design team able to apply new paint schemes and trim finishes, completely re-trim interiors with new colors and materials, and add other accessories and modifications — especially appealing to those who are not the original owners and want something different. But this is the first time a spec has been changed so early into the car’s life, with the husband only having owned his Chiron for a handful of months before sending it back to the factory.
He was apparently inspired while watching his wife’s Chiron go through its development process, making the decision to have his car rebuilt as hers was being created. It took seven months for the refurbishment process to be completed, with his Chiron now renamed ‘Coup de Foudre,’ a double entendre that means both “bolt of lightning” and “love at first sight.” The couple has owned a few other Bugattis before, but these Chirons were the first ones they’ve owned since new.
The “Vagues de Lumière” paint first debuted on the Veyron ‘L’Or Blanc’ twelve years ago, and a handful of Bugattis have featured similar liveries since. It takes weeks to complete the paint, with the lines first drafted onto the bodywork using cutouts that are taped on to mask off where to paint — that alone took one employee four weeks to perfect. The stripes are then painted on by hand, multiple layers at a time, and a multi-layer clearcoat is applied.
The husband kept his original color scheme of black-tinted carbon-fiber bodywork and French Racing Blue accents, but the original lines had to be removed and the hood, engine cover, rear wing and roof were all completely replaced. Bugatti’s process for visible carbon-fiber bodywork is super intricate too; the panels must be built and fitted with extreme precision so the carbon weave perfectly lines up across different body panels. Instead of the black wheels of his wife’s car, he chose a simpler five-spoke design with matching blue accents that are also hand painted.
While the exterior livery of the ‘Coup de Foudre’ car is nearly identical to that of ‘L’Aura,’ the husband chose a slightly different interior. His car has more visible carbon-fiber trim, and more black leather is used to contrast the French Racing Blue hides. The door panels both feature the “Vagues de Lumière” lines, but the black car’s have a different design and shaping.
Beyond the paint and interior, the husband’s Chiron had to undergo another major change: the fitting of the dual Sky View sunroof panels. When Bugatti first debuted the Sky View option in 2018, it said that customers wouldn’t be able to retrofit it to cars that didn’t have it, but evidently that has changed. Bugatti says the original roof panel had to be removed from the monocoque, which also required the entire interior to be taken out so it wouldn’t get covered in dust. The new roof was then put in place, needing to me structurally adhered back to the monocoque with the same millimeter tolerances that the factory requires.
The head of Bugatti’s aftersales workshop Frederic Stocks says this has been “one of the most technologically challenging projects [Bugatti] has ever undertaken,” with managing director Hendrik Malinowski adding that the two Chirons “showcase the savoir-faire that runs throughout the brand.”
Must be nice.
