It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the Bugatti Veyron made its debut, capping off its notoriously protracted development by snatching the title of world’s fastest production car with an astonishing 407 km/h top speed. Love it or hate it, there’s no denying the Bug’s outsized influence on the industry, on top of siring a dynasty of speed machines from Molsheim.
Bugatti has now resurrected the Veyron with the FKP Hommage, the name of which pays tribute to the seminal hypercar’s late architect – legendary former Volkswagen Group chairman Ferdinand Piëch. If those initials sound familiar (the K stands for Karl, if you must know), that’s because it was attached to another homage supercar a few years ago – the Lamborghini Sián FKP 37.
An engineer at heart, Piëch was instrumental bringing his brainchild to fruition, from sketching the W engine format (while on a bullet train in Japan, natch) to decreeing that the car needed to have over 1,000 PS, be capable of over 400 km/h, have all-wheel drive and be refined enough “to arrive at the opera in a tuxedo or a ball gown,” said Bugatti managing director Hendrik Malinowski.
It took far longer than expected and swallowed vast sums of money, but the Veyron did everything that was said on the tin, thanks to a monstrous 8.0 litre quad-turbo W16 making 1,001 PS and 1,250 Nm of torque, mated to a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. Remarkably, it did all of that in supreme comfort, the two occupants coddled in a plush leather-lined cabin.
Recreating the sheer impact of the original is no mean feat, but that was exactly what an immensely wealthy client tasked Bugatti’s Programme Solitaire – the exclusive coachbuilding and personalisation arm that had already churned out the Brouillard – to do with the FKP Hommage. The result is a one-off that takes Jozef Kabaň’s iconic Bauhaus-inspired design and drags it kicking and screaming into the modern day.
Built on the bones of the Chiron, the FKP Hommage carries all the hallmarks of its spiritual forebear – the cab-rearward profile, the gently-falling beltline, the rounded air intakes aft of the doors and the chrome strip that runs from the base of the A-pillars all the way to the rear of the car, among many other instantly recognisable details. Even the door handles have been faithfully recreated.
But the lines are more defined – such as the crease over the front fenders – and the entire design has been carefully stretched to fit the larger underpinnings. The signature horseshoe grille has also been made larger and more three-dimensional; milled from a single piece of aluminium, it stands proud of the rest of the front end, giving it much more road presence.
Other bits around the car have been modernised in order for the FKP Hommage to look right at home in 2026. The various apertures around the car have been made quite a bit bigger to feed and cool the more powerful engine – more on that later. The lamps also feature the latest LED technology, with L-shaped daytime running lights at the front and a tunnel-like design for the quad taillights.
Meanwhile, the wheels feature the same multi-spoke design as the Veyron’s original “Machiavelli” rollers, but with subtly deeper sculpting and upsized to 20 inches in diameter at the front, 21 inches at the rear. Most importantly, the open engine bay remains, revealing the uprated engine from the Chiron Super Sport. Featuring larger turbochargers, enhanced intercoolers, upgraded cooling systems and a reinforced gearbox, it now produces a heady 1,600 PS – meaning it should easily breeze past the Veyron’s top whack.
Even the characteristic two-tone black and red paint has been evolved for the FKP Hommage. The deep crimson hue was created by starting with a silver aluminium-based layer, topped with a red-tinged clear coat for added depth and lustre, As for the “black”, that is actually bare carbon fibre but with a 10% black pigment, so that the weave will surprise onlookers when they take a closer look.
Inside, the FKP Hommage is just as exquisite, continuing its recreation of the Veyron in some surprising ways. The horseshoe centre console returns, but with the Chiron’s vertically-arranged air-con dials and an engine-turned finish – a technique supposedly borrowed from Ettore Bugatti’s straight-eight engines. The lengthy transmission tunnel trim has also been machined from solid aluminium.
A round steering wheel is another refreshing blast from the past, as more and more carmakers adopt in-vogue flat-bottomed (and topped) rims. As per the original, the whole cabin is upholstered in tan leather, save for the Hermès-style intricately-pattern textile used on the seats, custom woven in Paris.
The real highlight of the cabin sits on top of the centre console – a 41 mm Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Tourbillon “clock” (nothing to do with Bugatti’s latest hypercar). This mechanical timepiece is not connected to the car in any way – to wind it, the “gondola” it sits on rotates several times a second, and it will do so even when the car is off to keep time.
Given that one of these – one that sits on your wrist, of course – currently retails at more than a million ringgit on the secondhand market, you won’t be surprised to find that the rest of the car isn’t cheap. A spokesperson told Autocar that the FKP Hommage cost the owner in excess of €10 million (RM47.3 million). Yeowch.
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It’s 2026,
Unlikely this achieve world fastest car, not able to acquire track race record top rank too.
But more likely it’s Ferdinand Piëch’s fastest car for the world, pun?
Good writeup.
selling the same old car for twenty years i guess even bugatti must have learned this from proton and perodua