Background

Five years after the production-ready Veyron was presented, Bugatti revealed the ultimate iteration of their record-breaking supercar in the shape of a limited production run-out model designed to push the original concept to its limit.

Presented at the annual Monterey festivities in August 2010 (The Quail, the Laguna Seca historic races and the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance), a proper public motor show debut for the appropriately titled Veyron Super Sport then followed at the Paris Salon in September.

Bugatti first adopted the Super Sport moniker in 1931 for the supercharged 2.3-litre straight eight-powered Type 55. Unveiled at the 1931 Paris Salon, the Type 55 was based on Bugatti’s Type 51 Grand Prix car of the era, but its uncompromising nature resulted in limited demand and only 38 of these spectacular machines were ultimately built. Famously, it was the Type 55’s two-tone colour scheme that inspired the bi-colour paint option for the Veyron.

In more recent times, the ill-fated EB110 of the Romano Artioli era was also offered in uprated Super Sport trim, but as a consequence of poor trading conditions it proved even less popular than the Type 55. Having been unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in 1992, only 32 examples of the EB110 Super Sport were built after the initial batch of prototypes.

In a similar fashion to these previous SS-badged Bugattis, the new Veyron-based Super Sport was the result of continuous development of the Veyron concept and thus considerably enhanced over the base model. Although a limited batch of just 30 cars was initially announced, the tub, suspension, wheels, engine, gearbox and aero kit all came in for considerable attention which explained the substantial premium these cars retailed at compared to a standard Veyron.