The world’s fastest open-top car now comes dressed like it raided Fort Knox. Bugatti has unveiled the W16 Mistral “La Perle Rare,” a one-off commission finished in a hand-painted gold-and-white livery that took hundreds of hours to complete. It exists for a single, unnamed client who apparently has both impeccable taste and a limitless budget.
The story behind this car starts at the 2023 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, where Jascha Straub, manager of Bugatti’s Sur Mesure personalization division, met the client who would set this whole thing in motion. The original idea was silver. Then it drifted through various shades of white before finally landing on a scheme Bugatti calls “Vagues de Lumière” — Waves of Light.
The result is striking. The hood wears a gold-infused hue with a pearlescent finish, while the lower bodywork is draped in a warm bespoke white. Sharp-edged gold stripes trace the car’s flanks, all laid down by hand using tape and masking applied by Bugatti technicians in Molsheim.
Both colors were created exclusively for this build. Bugatti says they will never replicate the combination.
Diamond-cut wheels carry the same two-tone treatment, tying the whole package together. Straub’s own handwriting spells out “La Perle Rare” on the exposed engine cover and beneath the active rear wing. It’s a signature flourish for a car that already screams exclusivity from every angle.
Inside, the theme continues without missing a beat. White upholstery meets warm gold inserts and ambient lighting, while machined and polished aluminum accents adorn the center console dials and door handles. Rembrandt Bugatti’s iconic Dancing Elephant sculpture appears embedded in the gear selector and embroidered on the headrests, a nod to the family’s artistic legacy.
Underneath all that precious-metal-inspired paint sits the same mechanical brutality that makes the Mistral the quickest roofless production car on the planet. The quad-turbocharged 8.0-liter W16 engine produces 1,578 horsepower and 1,180 pound-feet of torque, fed through a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox to all four wheels. Zero to 62 mph takes 2.4 seconds.
Zero to 124 mph arrives in 5.6 seconds. And if you’re truly unhinged, the car has been independently verified at 282.04 mph — a record set at the Papenburg track in Germany in 2024 by a special World Record Car edition.
For road use, a limiter caps things at a still-absurd 236 mph. One suspects the owner of La Perle Rare won’t be testing those limits anytime soon. At those velocities, a stray pebble becomes a ballistic threat, and this is not the kind of paintwork you subject to road debris.
Bugatti hasn’t disclosed the price of this particular build, which is the luxury-world equivalent of saying “if you have to ask.” The standard Mistral starts at five million euros, roughly $5.9 million at current exchange rates. Given the bespoke colors, the labor-intensive hand-painting process, and the one-off nature of the commission, La Perle Rare almost certainly commands a hefty premium over that already astronomical figure.
Only 99 Mistrals will ever be built, and every single one already has a buyer. Bugatti hasn’t said how many remain to be completed, but the production run is winding down as the company shifts its focus to the Tourbillon. That next-generation hypercar runs a hybrid-assisted naturally aspirated V16 producing 1,800 horsepower.
The Mistral represents the final chapter of Bugatti’s W16 era — a 20-year run that defined what a modern hypercar could be. La Perle Rare is a fitting send-off: excessive, meticulous, and completely unapologetic about it.
