Bugatti Veyron Basic Maintenance Can Cost Upwards of $50,000 a Year
The required yearly flush of all vehicle fluids alone will set you back $25,000.
I've got bad news for anyone looking for a heavily depreciated, deferred maintenance special Bugatti Veyron: getting that car back up to shape won't be cheap. Businessman Manny Khoshbin owns two of the monstrous W-16 powered cars, and he recently detailed its maintenance schedule and costs on his YouTube channel. Chances are, you already know it will be expensive—but maybe not this expensive.
For starters, a base-model Veyron cost approximately $1.7 million when new, with models typically running between that and a whopping $3 million. According to Khoshbin, his stunning brown-on-brown 1,200-horsepower Legend-series Veyron Roadster cost him over $3 million. It was clearly worth it, though, as he says it's the fastest roadster he owns.
Bugatti recommends changing all of the Veyron's fluids annually to the tune of about $25,000, partially because of the 16 drain plugs involved to do so. This Veyron has twice as many plugs to open up than on the Lamborghini Huracán, according to Motor1. The location of some drain plugs drives up the cost of this service, too, with the car's grille, rear wheels, rear brakes, and rear fender liners all having to come out just to access certain drain holes.
Changing tires is especially pricey, given that they were custom made for the car by Michelin to withstand speeds over 250 miles per hour on the Veyron's wide wheels and handle 1.3 G on a skidpad, per HowStuffWorks. Bugatti recommends swapping these tires every two to three years whether they need to or not to the tune of $38,000 a set.
One cost I didn't expect to see here are the wheels. Most of us keep the wheels on our cars for the lifetime of said car unless they get significantly damaged before then. Not so for the Bugatti, as the manufacturer recommends replacing them every 10,000 miles for a cost of $50,000.
All this adds up to a ton of cash every two years or so, provided you rack up 10,000 miles in that timespan. Including the wheels, you're looking at $113,000 over 24 months. It's as much as a nice condo in a midsize town, or maybe a college education if you don't go to a pricey private school. Can you drive a college degree over 250 mph, though? Of course not! I think we know which one is the better financial decision here.
Khoshbin's collection includes 0.44% of the 450 Veyrons ever made plus some other choice machinery, according to Motor1. One of those Veyrons is a wild 1,109 hp Mansory Veyron, plus a one-of-one Hermes-edition Chiron. Khoshbin also loves the Mercedes SLR McLaren to the point where he owns five of them. Bonus: he actually drives his cars without worrying too much about the mileage, even keeping snacks in the Veyron's glove box. Clearly, he's our kind of collector, although I wish he'd chill out a bit more on public roads.
Yet if he needs to repair his Veyrons, he's still in for some pretty steep bills. They're not exactly a car you see in salvage yards all that often, so chances are, you'll be ordering these parts from Bugatti themselves. According to an EPA certification application found by Motor1, replacing one of the two air coolers is $9,000 for parts and $2,000 in labor. Replacing one turbocharger costs $6,400, with $9,000 in labor to do two of its four turbos at once.
Labor costs get gnarlier as you dive deeper into the engine bay, with one $800 camshaft costing about $21,000 in labor due to the lengthy disassembly required to get to it. The worst part to replace is the fuel tank, which will set you back a total of $42,000—$22,000 of which is labor alone. As you can imagine, even filling that 26.4-gallon isn't cheap, as Khoshbin notes one fine dinner in Los Angeles costing less than his fuel bill for the way there.
All of these numbers are almost enough to make you empathize with the guy who infamously wrote his Veyron off by driving it into a lake. Just don't call it a Lambo and we're good.
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