Luxury car companies hate him. You too could have a supercar. Shocking: Bugatti built by a man from Vietnam looks like it’s worth $3 million!
Honestly, there are so many ways to clickbait a story like this. It’s also a lot of fun to do. The facts are easy to explain, and after that, you can just tell your readers how they’re supposed to feel about this. So let’s do that.
A group of non-professional car mechanics from Vietnam have just finished a replica of the Bugatti Chiron. It took them about a year to make, but that’s time well spent considering the parts from a 1998 Toyota Corolla now reside in something that looks like it’s worth $3 million.
The YouTube channel NHET TV has been documenting the build as it went on. It’s amazing how much hard work they put into it. This isn’t a Toyota Corolla with some metal on top. No, the builders created a metal chassis from scratch into which the Corolla four-cylinder went. This is most likely a 1.4-liter with about 90 horsepower, but you have to give them credit for putting it in the back.
The bodywork was sculpted out of clay using a toy model and photos of the actual Chiron as reference. Obviously, it didn’t come out 100% accurate, but if you don’t obsess over the smallest details of a supercar’s design, you might be fooled at first.
We love how the Vietnamese team got the essence of the Bugatti supercar from every angle: the C-shape of its profile, the little squares in the headlights, and the trademark horseshoe grille. At the back, it’s even got the right kind of taillight design, as well as a gigantic moving wing. Something tells us all that downforce isn’t going to be needed. The exhaust is the wrong shape, but we’ll definitely let that slide.
So is this ethical?
Well, for the most part, yes. Making a knockoff bag or shirt based on a billion-dollar company’s design is bad since thousands of people are potentially going to buy said knockoff. However, nobody is ever going to mistake this for a real $3 million supercar. There are a million tells, from the fact that it can’t hit 261 miles per hour to the lack of luxury features.
Yes, copying the Chiron is technically infringing on a design that costs millions to develop. But where do you draw the line? Isn’t drawing or taking a photo of a Bugatti technically the same thing?
