The Bugatti Chiron in the Wild...

In case you didn’t see my last post, I’m in the process of building the LEGO Technic #42083-1 Bugatti Chiron. With that being said, I was walking down the street last week and a car caught my eye. It looked very familiar to a Bugatti Chiron, but I figured it couldn’t be. Most people don’t just park their $2.5M+ car right there on the street. I had to go over and take a look.

Okay, maybe I should be a little more specific. If you’ve read the blog, you know that my non-Lego job has taken me to Germany so I had to shut down sales. Living in Europe, my family has done some traveling and recently we took a couple days to go to the Alsace region of France. While there, we stopped in Strasbourg for the Christmas Market (if you’re an American and you celebrate Christmas and you have never been to a true European Christmas Market, they are pretty cool). Strasbourg happens to be near Molsheim, France (about 20 minutes away) and Molsheim is where the Bugatti factory is located.

Back to the car… no it wasn’t just sitting there. It was in a glass enclosed case and there was a security guard outside as well. None the less, it was still the real deal. I never thought I would see a Bugatti Chiron up close and personal or at least as close as the glass would let me. I talked to our host at the B&B we stayed at and he said Bugatti factory tours are only available for car buyers and friends of workers. Good luck getting to see inside the factory.

Back to the car… Next to the car was a sign.

The sign is in French on the left, German in the middle, and English on the right. In case you can’t read the picture I posted, it reads:

“We are proud of our company roots in Molsheim, about 25 km away from Strasbourg,
where our headquarters are still today.

In 1909 Ettore Bugatti founded our company here in Alsace, and to this day Bugatti
represents the pinnacle of the automotive world.

Like the Strasbourg Christmas market we combine tradition with a clear vision.

All qualities and know-how of our company accumulated in 110 years of our existence are
contained in each and every one of the only 500 BUGATTI CHIRON going to be built..”

The sign then gives some of the stats on the vehicle.

Engine:
-8 Litre 16-Cylinder-engine
-4 turbochargers with Bugatti 2-stage turbocharging

Power:
1,500 HP (6,700 U/min)

Torque:
1,600 Nm (2,000 - 6,000 U/min)

Acceleration:
0 - 100km/h 2.4 sec (that’s roughly 0 to 60 mph)
0 - 400 km/h 32.6 sec (that’s roughly 0 to ~250 mph)

Vmax:
420 hm/h (electronically limited) (or around 260 mph)

Enough blabbing, here are a few more pics of the car. The front was white and the back was a navy blue or darker blue type color. The blue color looks similar to the blue of the LEGO version.

So I wouldn’t be interested in this vehicle if it weren’t for the LEGO version. I’m not a gear head, but I’m a huge fan now that I have a LEGO version and was super excited to actually see one of these.

But that’s not all…

If you purchased the set you saw this picture in the instruction manual.

It’s a picture of the actual car and the LEGO version with an offset in front of the Château St. Jean in Molsheim, France.

On our drive home from the Strasbourg area, I was conversing with my Non-LEGO Spouse (NLS) and talking about Bugatti and how the plant was nearby somewhere. Using the power of the internet she looked it up and told me it was about 2 minutes away. So we came upon a traffic circle, I went straight instead of turning and…

Tah-dah! Okay, we had to take a few passes to get the picture just so, but thankfully it was a Sunday and there wasn’t a lot of traffic. So there’s the full building. Just no cars in front.

Here’s a sign near the Château.

We figured the factory had to be close by and sure enough it was. We hit a traffic circle and took a different exit and saw the factory. It’s not very big although if you’re only building 500 of a vehicle and you probably take your time building it, you don’t need a big facility. We didn’t take pictures of the signs in French telling us it was private property and to not trespass. We just took our pictures and turned around. My NLS questioned why the workers didn’t have better cars. My guess is the employee discount doesn’t take much off the $2.5M price tag.

Hope you enjoyed some additional info on the Bugatti Chiron. I don’t think I’ve seen a set review or LEGO blog yet that showed pictures of the actual car or the factory. I’ll claim to be the first to include pictures of both in a LEGO review.

Happy building!

Brick le France - with beaucoup de retired sets

If you’re an American AFOL, you’ve probably glanced at notices for new sets and have seen pricing in other countries listed. You’ve probably also seen AFOLs from around the world complaining about how sets are priced in their country as compared to US prices. As an American AFOL living in Germany, I figured I would take a look to see what I could learn.

Before I go into a specific example, I wanted to point out a difference in taxes. In the states, depending on where you are, you pay a sales tax. This tax is priced in after you make the purchase. So LEGO sets its retail price (or Walmart, or Amazon.com, etc.) and then you pay an additional percentage at checkout. In Europe, from what I’ve seen, the Value Added Tax or VAT is built into the price. Your receipt tells you how much the item actually was and what you paid in VAT. So keep that in mind for those Americans who forget the sometimes 8% to 10% sales tax that gets added onto purchases.

Back to my main point… I stopped at a Cora store in France a few weeks back. For those of you in the US who have never been, Cora is kind of like a Walmart only the one I went to was much nicer than a Walmart. While there, I of course had to check out the LEGO selection.

First off they had a lot of retired Collectible Minifigures, but not the current Harry Potter Collectible Minifigure series.

As you can see from the pictures, they had the Ninjago movie minifigures still on sale for €3.99 each. These were released back in August 2017 in the EU and apparently they still have them at retail price. Next you can see the Batman Movie Series 2 minifigures. These were released in the EU on 1 January 2018 and Cora had them for €3.50 which is less than the original retail of €3.99. Finally they had the Series 18 minifigures for €3.50. They were released back in April and again Cora had them for less than retail. I’m wondering if this is a trend in Europe or an anomaly. At Walmart or Target, usually collectible minifigures go fast so I was surprised to see so many options

Next up were a few City sets.

You can see #60104-1 - Airport Passenger Terminal - Retired in France in November 2017. Retail was €99.99, but selling for €94.99. Also #60051-1 - High-Speed Passenger Train - Retired in France in June 2018 and selling for €10 under retail. #60052-1 - Cargo Train is right next to it. It retired in June and they still have it selling at the original retail price. The last one I’ll mention is #60103-1 - Airport Air Show which retired in France back in January 2018. I have no idea on pricing from the picture I took because the label does not match the set. Anyways, interesting to see some retired sets still out there.

I didn’t go nuts taking pictures of all of them and I didn’t buy any either, but one that stood out was #75105-1 Millennium Falcon. It retired in France back in January 2018 and was done in the US back in November 2017. It was still at Cora and there were multiple copies. I know I have seen the price of that set going up on BrickLink.com and I may have been one of the sellers of those a few months back.

If any Americans are reading this, should I have bought some of the retired sets you can’t find in the states anymore? Even with the exchange rate of around $1.20 to the Euro, would it be worth it? What do you think?