[imagesource: PXhere]

Nothing beautiful comes cheap and easy.

To get your hands on the world’s fastest, most luxurious supercar, you may need to trek to Europe and perfect your table manners to such a degree that you impress the automakers enough that they allow you to drive one of their babies.

We’re talking about Bugatti, of course, where the road for prospective buyers often begins with a pilgrimage to a château in northern France and ends with speed and acclaim.

The Telegraph talks about Ettore Bugatti judging the eligibility of his customers not by how they managed the wheel but by how they handled their knives and forks at the dinner table.

If a prospective driver had any lapse in etiquette or poor utensil control, they would miss out on their dream machine.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

The tale goes on:

From the company’s very start in 1909, clients would be vetted at the imposing Château Saint-Jean – a property near Molsheim in the Alsace region (now a part of France but then annexed to Germany), which Bugatti had bought and where he made his cars.

The formal mansion, with its oeil-de-boeuf windows and balustrades, was built by the Wangen de Geroldseck family in 1857, on the site of a 13th-century stronghold of the Knights of Malta.

Bugatti threw lavish parties at the famous location, celebrating his numerous Grand Prix wins throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

While things are a little different these days without Ettore Bugatti around (he died in 1957), the Château Saint-Jean still remains the beating heart of the company.

It is said that most prospective Bugatti buyers still make the pilgrimage to Molsheim, where the company’s space-age modern factory is right next to the château:

Image: Telegraph / James MCNAUGHT

It is also – to the relief of those hopefuls jetting in to personalise a new Bugatti – a lot more welcoming:

Based on their investment, the clients deserve a warm welcome: a ‘standard’ 8,000cc Chiron costs from £2.7 million, and there are almost infinite possible upgrades with commensurately gigantic price tags.

In this day and age, if you’re spending over R54 million on a supercar, you better get treated with maximum praise and respect, but it is not completely off the table that you have to know how to sit at the table.

Tom Cruise, Jay-Z, and Cristiano Ronaldo are among the lucky few who managed to bag a Bugatti in recent times:

The football star reportedly recently splashed out £8.6 million on a limited-edition Centodieci, one of 10 in existence, which can hit 236mph. Bugatti drivers also include billionaire fashion designer Ralph Lauren, who owns a rare 1938 Type 57SC Atlantic, and talk-show host Jay Leno, who boasts a supercharged 37A from the 1920s in his car collection.

The world’s most expensive car is also Bugatti’s best-known vehicle, the La Voiture Noire, painted entirely in high-gloss black, boasting six exhaust pipes, and finished off with a lovely price tag of £11,3 million.

Impressive still, at the Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany in August 2019, British racing driver Andy Wallace pushed a modified Chiron to a fantastic speed of 304,77 miles per hour, setting a world speed record for a production car.

It’s not just the raw power of the supercar that gets Bugatti fans all hot under the collar, but also the splashy add-ons and especially, the exclusivity guaranteed by paying such sky-high prices.

All you have to do is keep your knife and fork in order and not eat with your mouth full. It goes without saying.

[source:telegraph]