Bugatti Divo ‘Lady Bug’

The Bugatti Divo, known as the ‘Lady Bug’, is a one-off culled from the limited edition of 40 Divo production models.

The Lady Bug was commissioned for a customer and actually took two years to complete. Sometimes, when something costs in excess of $5.8 million, it pays to be patient.

The French supercar manufacturer unveiled the Divo at The Quail in Monterey, California, in the summer of 2018. The limited edition Bugatti supercar is named after Albert Divo who had a career racing for Bugatti commencing in 1928. “It’s made for bends…” said Stephen Winkelmann, Bugatti’s President, commenting on the handling that the lucky owners could expect on track days, at the time of the unveiling.

Bugatti engineers were able to remove 77 pounds over the comparable weight of the Chiron while still managing to add 198 extra pounds in downforce. The Bugatti Divo can achieve a top speed of 236mph and 0-60mph in just 2.5 seconds and offers 1480hp thanks to the centre-mounted quad-turbocharged 8-litre W-16 engine. Proof was in the pudding, as the Divo lapped the Nardò in southern Italy 8 seconds faster than the Chiron.

So why would anyone want to change the existing highly prized limited edition anyway? Bugatti says that it was approached just after the Monterey launch in 2018 with a request for an edition with some tweaks to the ‘standard’ Divo to make it stand out from the other 39 vehicles.

Interestingly, one of the major problems the designers had was replicating the desire to have a geometric diamond pattern added to the rich burgundy exterior colour. It proved surprisingly difficult to transfer the CAD diamond stencils to the actual 3-dimensional Divo vehicle itself, requiring many tweaks to the original pattern design consisting of around 1,600 individual diamond shapes. The problem lay with the diamonds being able to lay perfectly over the curves and lines of the supercar without being distorted from their original intended shape.

Once Bugatti designers were happy with the prospective result, like a good West End play the team undertook several rehearsals and dry runs before committing to finally laying the transfer on to the Divo (they actually tested the process a couple of times on other existing Bugatti Divos). The actual customer car was then painted, and the masking transfer sheeting removed to give the final result, which does look like a geometric ladybird, hence the nickname.

The original request was for a ‘geometric-dynamic algorithmic pattern’ and the final result is quite beautiful. It must have proved extremely satisfying for both customer and the Bugatti team that had dedicated two years to getting it right. Yes, patience is a virtue.

Image Source: motorauthority.com