Anything you can wreck, you can find on a Copart salvage lot—even cars as exotic as a 911 by Singer are no exception. Even so, the last thing you expect to see in their inventory is a hypercar like the Bugatti Chiron, one of which is nonetheless being auctioned online by Copart’s West Palm Beach, Florida location.
Believed to have been owned by Dominican musician El Alfa Jefe, this red-and-black 2019 Chiron is alleged to have been the target of an arson incident in July, about which few details are available. State Farm (who knew they insured hypercars?) condemned the car, sending it off to Copart with scars on its front left fender and hood, and a mere 2,175 miles on the odometer. It’s no basket case, though—Copart says it still runs and drives.
Older photos show the Bugatti’s interior covered in ash and dust, though it seems to have since been cleaned up. The auction currently sits at $346,000, or barely a tenth of its original estimated retail price of $3.45 million. It’s easily worth several times that leading bid in parts, and since it apparently drives, as a running hypercar. But it’ll never top out anywhere near the price of a new example, not just because of the damage, but because its title is said to be a Certificate of Destruction. According to CarTitles.com, that means it’s “intended to be destroyed and never to be used on the road or registered. It is unlikely that a vehicle with a certificate of destruction can ever be issued a valid title for transfer.”
It’s entirely possible some moneyed YouTuber scoops it up, and turns it into the world’s hairiest Baja build or one hell of a track car. With nearly 1,500 horsepower from an 8.0-liter, quad-turbo W16, it’d make even that Lamborghini Huracan off-road racer look tame. Odds are, though, it’ll get stripped for parts—after all, there’s a lot of money in dealing bits of Bugattis.
Update: Oct. 26, 10:24 a.m. ET: We’ve added a video sent in by a reader who has had hands on the car. He says the ABS is nonfunctional but, otherwise, it seems to be in good mechanical shape. Not that it matters with the certificate of destruction, but hey.
Got a tip or question for the author? You can reach them here: james@thedrive.com