Bugatti Galibier Confirmed for Production

It has been two-years since Bugatti pulled the covers off their Galibier super-sedan concept, and while they had made much noise about the concept when it was revealed, not much has been said about this car since. While no official information has been released yet in regards to the car’s name and performance figures, the President and CEO of Bugatti, Wolfgang Durheimer, keeps giving us some heads-up on the production of the car from time to time.

In a recent article from the German magazine Auto Motor und Sport, Bugatti CEO Wolfgang Dürheimer confirms that the new car will be in the vein of the controversial 16 C Galibier concept, which debuted in 2009. It will seat four and have a generous trunk, the car has a much higher value that the Veyron – with lot of trunk volume and a four-seat plus one configuration. Dürheimer says.

More important is what’s fitted up front, of course, which the article claims will be a 16-cylinder engine, although power output wasn’t mentioned. The super-sedan is expected to use a version of the Veyron’s W16 engine, though it could be detuned to only 800 horsepower for more civilized motoring. Interestingly, a hybrid model is on the docket as well, with an electric-only driving range of about 25 miles, according to Dürheimer.

Bugatti hopes to sell between 1,000 and 1,500 units of the super-luxe sedan over the course of its lifetime, roughly triple the number of Veyron coupes and Grand Sport convertibles Bugatti built since 2004. We are taking into consideration various scenarios, from 500, to even 1,000 or 1,500 units produced, Dürheimer was quoted as saying by the aforementioned source.

The story also says that the Galibier will go on sale in the fall of 2012, about a year earlier than most earlier projections. Pricing hasn’t been set, but Dürheimer hinted the Galibier will cost more than €1 million, which amounts to about $1.42 million at today’s exchange rates. We will set the price at the end. The amount is expected to be of seven figures. Today, the Veyron range is priced between 1.2 and 2 million euros. In the end, the Galibier is the absolute benchmark in the four-door sedan segment, Durheimer stated.