Volkswagen bought dormant Bugatti in 1998 and relaunched it with the 1,001hp Veyron

Bugatti had been dead for decades when Volkswagen Group chief Ferdinand Piech went on a shopping spree in 1998. He wanted the group at the very top of the industry and, after losing the Rolls-Royce name to BMW, he set the company on the dormant Bugatti marque.

Piech committed Bugatti to building a 1,001hp car that could top 400km/h and accelerate to 100km/h in under three seconds, a target he announced before any prototype ran. The project took years of engineering pain across drivetrains, cooling, tyres and aerodynamics.

The Veyron eventually hit 407km/h and entered production in 2005 at a purpose-built factory in Molsheim, France. It re-established Bugatti as a halo marque and became the reference point for every hypercar that followed.

Volkswagen turned a defunct name into the 1,001hp, 407km/h Veyron and a Molsheim factory that made Bugatti the hypercar benchmark.

Piech saw Bugatti as a way to put the Volkswagen Group at the absolute top of the industry.

He set a brutal spec: 1,001hp, over 400km/h, and a sub-three-second 0-100km/h time.

He announced the target before any engineering prototype existed, committing the firm to it.

The Veyron took years and vast sums but met every one of the demands.

It built a new Molsheim factory and made Bugatti the hypercar benchmark from 2005 onward.

A dormant name is worth money only if an owner is willing to spend to make it the best in class; Piech bought Bugatti purely to build an engineering statement, not a volume car.

The Veyron ran for a decade and sold out its planned production run, and Bugatti went on to the Chiron and beyond under Volkswagen ownership. The 1998 bet turned a bankrupt name into a functioning hypercar house and a durable brand halo. Piech's approach was expensive and never about volume, but it reset what a revived marque could mean.