By now, we know owning and servicing a Bugatti is a costly undertaking. It's rare to get insight into newer models like the Chiron, but older models like the Veyron are starting to pop up at independent service stations, which love to share how much the ownership experience actually costs.
This week we discovered that a spark plug and ignition coil replacement on a high-mileage Veyron costs over $20,000, at least according to Fixitsteven, who recently posted about his experience with the matter on Reddit.
Posted in Justrolledintotheshop, Steven shared plenty of pictures and insight into the vehicle. It's a "high-mileage" example with 15,000 miles on the clock, and it was recently sold to his friend by real-estate mogul and lover of exotic sports cars Manny Khoshbin.
The owner said the vehicle was losing power above 140 miles per hour, a problem we imagine you'd run into often in a car with more than 1,000 horsepower on tap.
Along with what Steven posted on Reddit, Carscoops contacted him to get more information about the ordeal. Steven said the new owner used his shop to save a significant amount. According to his estimate, he saved around $8,000, based on Bugatti Beverly Hills charging $440 an hour for labor. The entire job takes roughly 40 to 50 hours to complete.
Steven managed it in about 35 hours, and it's e a heck of a process. "The only way to get the coils out is to cut about a hundred zip ties and peel the engine harness away from the brackets while not dropping anything into the abyss of the engine bay. Even with all that out of the way, the ignition coils of cylinders 6 and 13 hit the charge pipes, so those have to be moved out of the way as well," he said.
Only two spark plugs had gone bad, and Bugatti parts are unsurprisingly expensive. If you're lucky, you have a pretty fantastic warranty on your vehicle, but if not, there are some workarounds. The spark plugs cost $170 a piece from Bugatti, but they're shared VW group plugs that cost just $18 from NGK.
However, the coil packs aren't in the same league and are exclusively available through Bugatti. They cost $730 each and take over a month to arrive from the factory. After replacing the parts, Steven said he could verify the problem was solved independently, something we imagine he figured out on a long, quiet stretch of road.
An interesting question a commenter asked was why this problem only came up when the vehicle was operating above 140 mph. "Turbocharged exotics are boosted by gear, so the higher gears see higher levels of boost at higher speeds, and that's when the amount of pressure in the combustion chamber overwhelms the weak ignition coils. This symptom of spark blowout cannot be diagnosed by just revving the car up and looking at live data," he responded.
We can't imagine this excuse will hold up in court when you show up after going 150mph in a 35 mph zone.