Coachbuilding has been a major part of Bugatti’s automobiles since the company’s inception. It used to be that you would buy a chassis from Bugatti (or whichever other automaker) and then have your favorite coachbuilder design a custom body for it — or, sometimes, use Bugatti’s own designs, as Jean Bugatti started doing for many models like the Type 57, revolutionizing the industry. That’s hard to do in the modern era thanks to pesky things like crash and emissions testing, so coachbuilding fell by the wayside for decades — unless you were the Sultan of Brunei, of course. But thanks to new modular architectures and other advancements, companies like Rolls-Royce and Ferrari have brought coachbuilding back into favor, designing and building hugely expensive one-off or few-off models.
Using the Chiron architecture and W16 powertrain as a basis, Bugatti made the limited-run Centodieci and Divo, but so far the only one-off coachbuilt new Bugatti has been La Voiture Noire, which set a record for the most expensive new car ever sold when it was revealed in 2019. Bugatti has its Sur Mesure program for extreme customization of series production models, but now the brand is jumping back into coachbuilding with the inception of its new Solitaire division, which is focused on bespoke one-off models. The first car from Programme Solitaire is a coupe called the Brouillard, inspired by and named after company founder Ettore Bugatti’s favorite horse.
Horse girls rise up
Everyone in the Bugatti family had a love for animals; many of the sculptures created by Ettore’s brother Rembrandt were of animals, and his prancing elephant became a signature Bugatti mascot, used as hood ornaments on the Royale and as trim adornments on new models — including being placed inside of the Mistral‘s shifter. Says Bugatti about Brouillard the horse:
[Brouillard was] the faithful companion who could open his own stable door through a special mechanism designed by Ettore himself, this car celebrates the founder’s great love of horses, and his favorite horse of all. A majestic thoroughbred with a coat as white as the first snowfall, speckled with the subtle shades of a summer morning mist, Brouillard was no ordinary horse; he was the embodiment of everything Ettore admired: speed, beauty, and unparalleled grace.
Not only does the new Brouillard take its name from that horse, but it has horses all over the interior, and horses served as visual inspiration for the coupe’s exterior. Says design director Frank Heyl:
The bond between Ettore and Brouillard was deeply special. He saw in Brouillard a mirror of his own creations; the curves of the horse’s body, the muscular flanks, the perfect proportions – these were all elements he tried to capture in the steel and aluminum of his cars. So here, the aesthetics of this car abstain from sharp lines in favor of more reflection-based surfaces that mimic a kind of athletic muscle, like a trained horse. It’s heavily focused on sculptural surfaces and organic shapes, as the vision of a tendon underneath the skin. Enormous power and complexity, hidden by a veil of dignified simplicity.
A familiar face
Overall the Brouillard is like essentially a fixed-roof coupe version of the roofless Mistral roadster, but with bodywork that is both curvier and more technical. Bugatti doesn’t say the name of the gorgeous green paint, but it’s paired with green carbon-fiber elements on the lower sections, like the bumper fins, blade-like side skirts and rear diffuser. The company says this split takes from the rule of thirds in classical art; your eyes typically focus on the top two-thirds of a car’s design, so the lower third being darker helps it blend in with the car’s shadow, while also making the car look longer and lower.
At the front the bodywork surrounding the headlights isn’t as aggressive, but there are still huge air intakes and the hood has a wing-shaped air vent made from carbon with a aluminum central spine that connects to a very cool bright surround for the wide horseshoe grille.
The rule of thirds
Bugatti’s signature C-line that wraps around the side windows is more pinched and prominent, and black pillars and fuel-filler doors behind the side windows give the greenhouse an excellent visor-like appearance. The large rear haunches are rounder and softer than the Mistral’s, nicely catching the light and giving the Brouillard a great stance. I love the wheels that are shaped like the horseshoe grille, too.
Unlike the Chiron and Mistral, the Brouillard has a pair of prominent air intakes on the roof, like on the Veyron. Finished in matte black, the intakes have “W16” stamped into the sides, so onlookers will know what the Brouillard is powered by. They flow back into a more sculptural rear deck that frames the uncovered engine bay, though there is an aluminum central spine that runs from the front edge of the roof all the way back. The roof has glass section shaped like a NACA duct, but it’s not just a flat panel, instead having scooped-out sections where the intakes sit. That can’t be cheap to produce.
Form and function
In addition to looking incredible, Solitaire one-offs like the Brouillard will meet all of the rigorous aerodynamic and thermodynamic needs of the 1,600-hp powertrain, ensuring they’re just as capable and usable as any other Bugatti. Surely developed with learnings from the Chiron Profilée, the Brouillard has a fixed ducktail spoiler that flows off the haunches and stands above the X-shaped taillights. Bugatti says the spoiler helps with the car’s aerodynamic balance, and the air intakes create a pressure drop for more air flow through the radiators.
The diffuser is even more dramatically shaped than the Mistral’s, with the outer edges leaving huge chunks of the wide rear tires visible. Instead of the Mistral’s trapezoidal exhaust tips, the Brouillard has two pairs of round tips stacked on top of each other like the Chiron Super Sport, with two additional hidden exhaust pipes mounted inboard. Bugatti says the exhaust packaging allowed engineers to maximize the functional surface area of the diffuser. All of this “represents the culmination of W16 platform development.” The company hasn’t given any performance specs for the Brouillard, but given how the Mistral hit 282 mph without a roof, it could be even faster than that.
Feeling green
Things get really fun on the inside. Pistachio green leather is paired with tons of similarly hued green carbon fiber, with a lot of machined aluminum bits thrown in for good measure. I’m always a fan of a color-matched cabin, especially when the color scheme is as strange as this one. The seats are custom for the Brouillard, shaped to fit the owner and their preferences. As the Brouillard is a coupe, it has its own bulkhead and roof surround made from carbon fiber, with an illuminated C-shaped central spine bisecting the driver and passenger sections like that on the Chiron. But aside from those elements and a unique center armrest, the design of the cabin is the same as a Mistral’s.
Obviously the main event is the plaid upholstery and all of the horses. Bugatti says the tartan fabric is custom-woven and sourced from Paris, and it’s used on the door panels, steering wheel, seats and wraparound dashboard pieces. Images of galloping horses are embroidered on the doors, while the upper seat sections have large overlapping horse heads. Instead of the little elephant found in the Mistral’s shifter, the Brouillard’s shifter (which is machined from a single block of aluminum) has a hand-crafted sculpture of Brouillard the horse placed in its glass insert.
Look at that horse, look at that horse, look at that horse
Oftentimes when a manufacturer releases photos and information about a one-off car, it keeps the owner’s identity a secret. Bugatti describes the buyer as “an enormously passionate Bugatti collector, not just of cars – both old and new – but also of the eclectic furniture of Carlo Bugatti and the beautiful bronze sculptures of Rembrandt Bugatti.” The company says they wanted to honor “all of the craft and artistry of the Bugatti family together in a masterpiece that celebrated a core inspiration of Ettore Bugatti’s approach to automotive design: his love of his horses.”
Luckily for us, the Brouillard’s owner wants to be publicly known, as he’s been posting all of the teasers to Instagram. It was commissioned by Michael Perridon, a Dutch businessman who owns the largest collection of Bugattis in the world. He even has a website for the collection, with photos and information for all of the cars, sculptures and pieces of furniture found in it. The collection’s Bugattis get used, too — at The I.C.E. in St. Moritz earlier this year, his Type 57G Tank could be found drifting around the track.
