VEYRON DIES IN 2014 IN FAVOUR OF A8-BASED SALOON

A report by German magazine Der Spiegel has revealed that Bugatti is working on a super-luxury saloon loosely based on the Audi A8 for 2014 - and that the Veyron will have to die to make room for it.

Part of the reason is that a large proportion of Bugatti's potential customers already own a Veyron, so sales have slowed dramatically, but VW is also said to be calling on Bugatti to pull its weight. Currently, the marque does not turn a profit for VW, and so needs to increase its sales volumes to do so - and a luxury saloon is seen as the way to do it.

But while the basic platform architecture may be shared with a humble Audi A8, the result could still end up closely resembling the 16C Galibier concept car that wowed Bugatti fans back in 2009.

The 16C Galibier concept is an ultra-luxurious, all-wheel-drive saloon powered by the same 8.0-litre, W16 engine as in the Veyron, but producing somewhere between 789bhp and 987bhp. Just how much of that will make it to Bugatti's planned production car, however, remains to be seen.