Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo is the buyer of one example of the newest Bugatti production model, according to Italian media outlets.
The car is called the Centodieci; it was revealed last year. Aside from the one-off Voiture Noire, which was custom designed and sold for $12.5 million, the Centodieci is the priciest of the nouveaux Bugatti to come down the pike: around nine million dollars.
Centodieci means 110, a hat-tipping to the ill-fated but idealistic Bugatti reboot attempt in the 1980s. Also in keeping with its name is the production number: the Centodieci was planned as a ten-example run. The model uses Bugatti’s W16 engine, and gets nearly 1,600 horsepower out of it. The car’s 0-124 MPH time is an astonishing 6.1 seconds. It can reach a top speed of 236 MPH.
The new production Bugatti models have represented a steadily and dramatically increasing pricing evolution; in reverse chronology, the Divo sold for over five mil, the Chiron, Chiron Sport, Chiron Pur Sport, and Chiron Super Sport 300+ between three and four, and the Veyron—the prototypical model from the rebooted company—was priced at a relatively modest $1.25 million in its first years of production.
Ronaldo was the highest-paid athlete in the world in 2016 and 2017, according to Forbes. The Portuguese sensation is the first soccer player and only the third athlete to cross the $1 billion mark in earnings.