A new chapter in the Bugatti story begins today as Porsche, which became the VW Group steward of Bugatti in 2021, is selling its stake to a consortium of investors.

Bugatti dates back to 1909 when its eponymous founder Ettore Bugatti started making cars in the Alsace region contested by France and Germany. That incarnation lasted through two world wars but was gone by 1963. The supercar boom of the late 1980s brought Bugatti back for the first time with the high-tech EB110, a car that combined a carbon fiber monocoque built by Aérospatiale (now better known as Airbus) with an F1-sized V12 (with four turbochargers) and all-wheel drive. As spectacular as that sounds, the twin threats of the even more superlative McLaren F1 and an economic downturn saw it fizzle out in the mid-’90s.

The Bugatti you know now returned in 1998, one of a number of projects of Ferdinand Piech, who was then boss of VW Group. He wanted to show off the superiority of VW Group’s engineering. One project was an ultra-streamlined commuter car, the XL1. Another was the Bugatti Veyron, a hand-built mid-engined two-seater with a thousand metric horsepower and manners so docile his grandmother could drive it to the opera.

In 2021, VW Group reduced its stake in Bugatti when it formed a joint venture with Rimac, a specialist in high-performance electric powertrains based in Croatia. With rapid electrification of the auto industry looking like a fait accompli back then, it made perfect sense for Bugatti to have direct access to the technology that had already made internal combustion performance look quaint. Bugatti Rimac was owned 45 percent by Porsche (and therefore VW Group), 55 percent by Rimac Group (which Porsche owned a 24 percent stake in, having first invested in Rimac in 2018).