Unique Bugatti Veyron Malcolm Campbell for sale

One-off hypercars are ubiquitous these days. You can probably blame Horacio Pagani for that. Only just last week in Monterey, he released another ‘final’, one-of-one Zonda called the Arrivederci. It’s a game all the major hypercar firms have been playing for years given how lucrative it can be. Heck, Koenigsegg has released so many one-offs that nobody knows what the standard models even look like any more. Not to mention the endless supply of boutique offerings that can just about scrape enough funding together for a handful of ‘limited-run’ examples. There’s never been this much choice for the infinitely rich car collector.

As a result, it’s hard to get excited about many of these bespoke hypercars given the sheer volume of them. That hasn’t always been the case. A decade or so ago, the super-exclusive supercar was so rare that rumours would circulate about whether certain cars even existed. True, that’s partly down to social media being in its infancy, but also because you had to really buddy up with a manufacturer or design house to get a hypercar of your very own. So while this one-of-four Bugatti Centenaire in one-of-one Malcolm Campbell spec may look like just another Veryon in a glitzy colour scheme, back in 2009 it was one of the most special cars on the planet.

When the Centenaire cars arrived at the end of the decade, the one-off Veyron hadn’t really been done before. Bugatti released a Bleu Centenaire for the 2009 Geneva Motor Show as a 100th birthday present to itself, with the quartet of additional Centenaires arriving later that year at Villa d’Este. Though they shared the same name as the Geneva car, all four came with polished aluminium wings  (as opposed to the all-blue finish on the earlier Centenaire) and each sported their own centre colour as a celebration to former factory racing drivers. The blue and white cars paid homage to Jean-Pierre Wimille and Hermann zu Leiningen, while a maroon car honoured Achille Varzi. Each scheme represented the competition colours of the driver’s country of origin.

Being a Brit, Sir Malcolm Campbell’s car comes painted in British Racing Green, which arguably looks the best contrasted against the mirror finish of the wings and wheels. Sir Malcolm is better known for his numerous speed records, of course, breaking the 300mph barrier in 1935 – but he also competed as a Bugatti works driver in the late 1920s, winning at the gruelling, four-hour Grand Prix de Boulogne in 1927 and 1928, as well as the ultra-fast 200-mile Grand Prix at Brooklands the same year. 

A worthy candidate for a special edition Veyron, then. The Centenaires were mechanically identical to those of the 16.4, with the 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16 left untouched with 1,001hp and a top speed of 267mph. However, it did feature unique Strasborg wheels, a polished grille and body-coloured air vents, as well as the record-setter’s signature dotted around the cabin. More elaborate limited-run models would arrive in subsequent years, but the simplicity of the Centenaire, and the fact that it’s one of the first bespoke Veyrons created, makes it that extra bit more special.

You’re probably thinking that you’d need a royal trust fund at your disposal to get hold of a one-off Bugatti, and generally you’d be right. But the Malcolm Campbell edition Centenaire we have here is only £2,700,000. Now obviously, that’s a ginormous amount of money by any standard, but this German-registered Super Sport will set you back roughly the same amount after import duties, while this newer Chiron is a good £400k more. All are special in their own right, but there’s no denying a chrome-coloured Veyron is the only one that can hold its own no matter which ‘unique’ hypercar you park alongside it…