This epic painting of the Bugatti Divo from ‘Lady Bug’ took two years to complete – Report Robb

Ettore Bugatti once said: “If it is comparable, it is no longer Bugatti”.

A hypercar collector took this notion literally and took the personalization experience of the French brand to the nth degree to create a Divo like no other.

The distinguished four-wheeled vehicle, which was named Lady Bug, has a truly unique painting that follows the tips of its scary namesake. The demanding American customer commissioned Bugatti to create “a strict geometric pattern consisting of diamond shapes in a unique color contrast” to differentiate his Divo from the 39 others that will eventually be on the roads.

This was not an easy task. In fact, the project took about two years to complete and was so draining that Bugatti almost threw in the towel at one point. The most difficult part was applying precisely this attractive pattern. Every time the design team tried to apply the diamond stencil to the body, it was distorted thanks to the car’s contours, curves and ribs. Basically, digital graphics created in CAD simply did not translate IRL.

“Due to the nature of the project, where a 2-D graphic was applied to a 3-D sculpture, and after several failed ideas and attempts to apply the diamonds, we were close to giving up and saying, ‘We can’t find the customer’s order. ‘, ”Jörg Grumer, head of colors and finishes at Bugatti Design, said in a statement.

Fortunately, Bugatti did not give up. Instead, designers began to meticulously modify each of the 1,600 diamonds to fit the Divo’s sculpted silhouette. Again, this was a complicated task, as just a failed shape or a small mistake meant destroying the entire design. Once this meticulous work was completed, the final pattern was applied to 20-foot films that would be affixed to the vehicle’s body.

In early 2020, the team tried to transfer the films to two test cars to ensure that the app was as seamless as possible. Once confident, they applied the films to the client’s real sports car and then spent countless days checking that each diamond was positioned correctly.

Finally, Lady Bug was ready for a splash of color in her shell. As expected, Bugatti performed the entire painting by hand and took two weeks to complete. The team developed two special metallic tones – Client’s Special Red and Graphite – to achieve the striking contrast effect. And finally, Lady Bug was ready to take flight.

With an 8.0-liter W-16 engine and a turbocharged quadruple that delivers 1,500 hp and 1,180 foot-pounds of torque, the Divo costs $ 5.4 million, plus options. (Imagine the two years of design work that would have left this gentleman back.) The hypercar is limited to just 40 examples and deliveries are scheduled to end in the first few months of this year, although it is difficult to imagine that any model will have exactly the same same impact as Lady Bug.

“The attention to detail required and the fact that we had to follow a zero defect strategy on the final car gave us enormous respect for the project,” added Grumer.

You have our respect too.

Check out more photos of Lady Bug below: