There's something about the Bugatti Veyron you may not know. Aside from its rocket ship-like performance creds and game-changing status, it was also a money loser. That's right. Bugatti's parent company, Volkswagen Group AG, lost, according to some sources, up to $6.24 million for every Veyron sold. I will repeat that: $6.24 million. Is that bad business or simply a case of sucking up the loss in order to build the fastest car on the planet? Let's go with the latter. But when it comes to the new Chiron, Bugatti has every intention of winning on both fronts.

"The Chiron is going to make money," Bugatti CEO Wolfgang Durheimer confidently told us at Geneva. When the Dieselgate scandal hit, people were worried the Chiron may be delayed or even shelved entirely. But according to Durheimer, "the Chiron program was designed from the outset to make money" even before the Dieselgate scandal hit. Call it a very fortunate coincidence. With that business case, VW Group was more than happy to see the Chiron enter production. With settlements in the tens of billions of dollars expected in the near future, VW Group can take comfort in the fact that it won't have to pump so much money into Bugatti; the Chiron is literally its own lifesaver.

Where the Veyron originally carried a price tag of around $1 million back in 2005, the Chiron is starting life priced at $2.4 million. And if it follows the same path as Veyron with plenty of special editions (expect a new world record edition for sure), we can envision the final Chiron carrying a $5 million price tag. And because this is a Bugatti, future owners will enjoy four years of free service, while the cost of things like the tires and wheels have been dramatically reduced. These sorts of changes have helped Bugatti turn the Chiron into a money-making machine. How much is the profit per car? That remains unknown.