Over the years, we have come across several different accounts of how expensive it is to maintain a Bugatti Veyron, including one from real estate mogul Manny Khoshbin, who at one point owned 0.44% of all Veyrons ever built. The numbers are so wild that it’ll make your jaw drop to the ground. However, we recently stumbled upon a post on Reddit that details the insane cost of replacing the spark plugs and ignition coils of the mighty W16 engine. It was posted by a user named Fixitsteven, the same guy who recently shared details of how a Rolls-Royce owner saved thousands of dollars by using a $160 replacement part from BMW.
Coming back to the fire-breathing French hypercar, the caption along the Reddit post claims the Veyron rolled into the garage with cylinders 13 and 16 misfiring at full throttle at speeds above 140mph. It’s interesting that the owner of the Bugatti was able to push the uber-luxurious hypercar to such speeds and noticed the 8.0-liter engine was not functioning properly.
Unless it was done on a racetrack or on Germany’s unrestricted Autobahn roads, the customer was clearly on the wrong side of the law. Furthermore, an engine misfire at those speeds can be nerve-racking; you don’t want the massive 16-cylinder engine to misbehave at crazy speeds. However, modern high-tech engines have different sophisticated systems in place to provide protection against engine misfires, including shutting off fuel injectors.
In most cases, old and soothe-covered spark plugs and faulty ignition coils cause an engine to misfire, and the Bugatti Veyron was no different. According to the Reddit post, it took a month for the 16 replacement ignition coils for the W16 engine to arrive from Bugatti, each priced at $750. Interestingly, the spark plugs used by the Veyron are common with VW parts and cost only $18 apiece, making it one of the most affordable components used on the French hypercar. However, the ignition coils alone cost $12,000 for the 8.0-liter quad-turbocharged engine, which is mad. Add labor costs for replacing all the parts, and you’re staring at a total bill north of $20,000.
Obviously, working on the Bugatti Veyron is not an easy job, which is quite evident from the pictures shared along with the Reddit post. In one of the photos, you can see a mechanic hoisted above the 16-cylinder engine on an engine creeper. A job like replacing the engine oil can cost upwards of $20,000. There are a total of 16 drain plugs, and none of them are easily accessible. The mechanics have to take off the rear wheels and brakes along with the lining on the rear fenders to change the engine oil.
[All images via Reddit]
