A Replacement Key for $13,500?

So let's say you're the poor guy on the block.  Forced to live beside folks who make much more money than you do.

While you're driving a 1986 Honda Prelude, with 198,000 miles on the clock, everybody else is driving new cars.  New SUV's inhabit the driveways of all your neighbors.  New Tahoes, and Escalades, and Tremors, and RAV4's.  All shiny and new.  And you have to drive past them to get to your job as a high school teacher.  You just go to sleep praying that one day you win the lottery and can buy yourself a new buggy.  And show your ass to all those people who're looking down their snooty noses at you.  Feeling happy their daughters didn't marry you.

And one day you do!

So you decide to spring for the ultimate ride.  The car that will show the world just how rich you are.  Just how much better off financially you are than your neighbors.  So you can drive past their crappy bungaloes reeeel slow every morning.  While they have to watch.  Their heads hung low, second-guessing their every decision in life.

You decide to buy Bugatti Chiron.  One of the most expensive cars in the world.  And one of the fastest.  They have been clocked at 252 miles per hour!  That fast!  Your neighbors' Toyotas won't go that fast!  They want to ask you for a ride.  But they're hesitant.  Because you're now so rich.

But then you learn the $3,200,000 the Bugatti costs is just the beginning.  The cost of keeping it running is truly breathtaking!  Somebody should have told you!  Let me list just how costly maintaining this beast will actually be:

     The annual maintenance cost of the Bugatti Chiron is, ya' ready for it? $25,000.  That covers the inspection and an oil change.  But this W-16 cylinder, quad-turbocharged wonder* has to be taken apart over a 27-hour period, the whole front end removed, to access the oil tank drain plugs. 

     And God help you if you need a brake job.  A complete brake replacement will set you back $116,000.  The individual rotors cost $18,300 each.

     If you've been a bad boy and left a lot of rubber past your neighbors houses, it may be time for some new tires.  The specialized Michelin tires cost $30,000 a set.  And should you desire Pilot Sports, that'll be $49,400 a set.  No less often than every 10,000 miles.  And Bugatti recommends replacing the wonderful, superlight, composite wheels every 10,000.  At an extra cost of $40,000!  

     And if that isn't enough, Bugatti requires the fuel tank to be replaced every 4 years.  That assumes you haven't killed yourself by now.  That cost will be a certified check for...$40,000!

     And just to round out the possible costs, a broken tailight costs $9,500.  A replacement key costs $13,500!  And if you blow up the transmission, prepare to pay $185,000.  

Oh yeah, the warranty on this Bugatti is 4 years.  You've seen those TV ads offering extended warranties, right?  Usually a couple of $Grand buys you that warranty.  Not with Bugatti.  Another 4 years on your Bugatti is, ready for it?  $91.600!  

     You should make it a point not to crater the engine.  Should you do so, get a 2nd mortgage on your mini-mansion and get ready to write a check for, (GULP!) $856,406.98.  Or just a bit more than the average cost of a house in Garden Grove, California.

     Oh yeah, and if you happen to live between the coasts, where immediate service isn't available, like the plains of Kansas, prepare to deliver your car to a major nearby airport.  Where it will be flown via air freight, at your cost, to Molsheim, France.  Where these jewels are made.  For maintenance and repair.  Imagine having to fly your car to a foreign country and pay $25,000 for an oil change!

You'll never look at the menu of charges at your local Hundai dealer the same way again, now will you?

It just might be that you can be rich enough to buy a $3,000,000 car, and yet be so poor you cannot afford to maintain it.  That's what our newly rich friend decided, as he awoke in a pile of sweat from his fever dream.  Maybe it's not worth all that outlay to hike up his nose as he drives by his neighbors.  With his middle finger proudly displayed.  Maybe a simple Land Rover Discovery would be enough.  They break all the time, cost an arm and a leg, their value falls like a stone once you drive it out of the dealership, they're surely not worth their inflated cost, but they're viewed as cool by those who don't know what they don't know.  That should be enough to make his neighbors jealous and feel bad for all the times they talked smack behind his back.  But then again, maybe not.

Yeah, that's what he'll do.  And he'll give the neighbors a ride in it if they ask him real nice...

*    The W-16 engine in the Bugatti Chiron is truly a wonder.  It's actually two narrow-angle V-8 Volkswagen motors "glued" together at the crankshaft.  With 4, count 'em, FOUR turbochargers added for an emphasis.  Creating a 1,500 horsepower piece of high-tech monster.  Enabling the Bugatti to hit 0-60 miles per hour in 0.08 seconds.  And 0-100 in 3.7 seconds.  Permitting you to drive past your SUV-driving neighbors in less than one breath out of your uber-rich body.  If you own this thing, you are truly blessed.  If you can somehow keep it maintained you are one of the very few.  It's kind of like a boat.  I don't want to own one.  I can't afford to own one.  I just want to know somebody who owns one.  So I can go for a ride every now and then...