The one-off Bugatti Chiron Profilée has just sold at auction for £8.7m

When it comes to auction stories, after a while, the gigantic numbers don’t land as hard as they once did – or as they still should. So let’s try to restore the full whump-in-the-duodenum feeling that this Bugatti Chiron Profilée’s price deserves.

Nine million, seven hundred and ninety two thousand, five hundred euros. Or, in non-continental currency, eight million, seven hundred and nine thousand, six hundred and twenty-five pounds.

Honestly, we probably still haven’t done the price of this one-off Bug justice, so let’s examine the car that our prosperous purchaser managed to procure.

Well, it’s a Chiron, obviously. And, in the great Bugatti tradition, it’s yet another special edition. Because owning what’s arguably the apotheosis of automobiles is somehow not special enough.

But then this special edition is also a bit of a special case. See, Bugatti had planned a limited run of Chirons called the Profilée, which was to blend the harder edge and sharper focus of the Pur Sport with a bit more of the touring civility that, perhaps more than any other vehicle we can think of, modern Bugattis excel at. Well, they would, if their owners actually used a fraction of their potential instead of... nope, not getting into it again.

You may have noticed when we said Bugatti ‘had planned’ to build – barring one ‘pre-series’ example, the Profilée was never to be. Demand for the Chiron and its derivatives was apparently strong enough that to follow through on plans for the Profilée would mean exceeding the cap of 500 cars that Bugatti set for its superlative supercar. So the limited run became an army of one, a rarity even among a rare breed.

The Profilée’s list of one-offs is impressive in its own right. The most noticeable of which has to be that unique sweeping tail, revised front splitter and larger air ducts, made to reconcile its GT nature and sporting... um, nurture? In any case, the unique ‘Argent Atlantique’ paintwork (Atlantic silver, for the single-lingual among us), blended with that deep blue-tinted carbon, does a pretty impressive job of highlighting the Profilée’s unique form.

Mechanically, the Profilée also gets a 200rpm higher redline at 6,900rpm, which can propel the Prof to 236mph. You might notice that this is rather lower than the ‘standard’ Chiron at 261mph, let alone the world-beating 300mph (and change) that Andy Wallace managed. But the Profilée is based on the Pur Sport, of course, with shorter gear ratios for maximum acceleration and a top speed of 216mph. And the Prof certainly brings the goods in that regard – unless you think getting from zero to 186mph in 12 seconds is somehow feeble.

So, like we said, a blend of Pur Sport and proper grand touring. Which means the Profilée also nets its own unique suspension and steering tune, while cherry-picked goodies from the Pur Sport (shift paddles, mode selector buttons and so on) sit among custom woven-leather centre console, which apparently uses 2,665 individual pieces of leather.

Whether its unique accoutrements, one-of-one status or the fact that it’s the final Chiron to be sold actually merit the Profilée’s astonishing selling price is rather moot – it did sell for that much, so it’s clearly worth that much. Nine million, seven hundred and ninety two thousand, five hundred euros.