LAS VEGAS: When a company goes bust, or even sometimes when it doesn't, it's not unusual for small groups of former employees to band together and do something similar, but usually on a smaller scale.
That's what happened when Bugatti went under in the mid-1990s, and a number of former employees got together and founded their own company called B Engineering.
Now, a company called Casil Motors has announced that it is reviving, in its own way, the car Bugatti was making when it went out of business, which is now to be called the SP-110 Edonis Fenice.
When Bugatti succumbed to the realities of economics it was building a supercar called the EB 110, although just 139 of them were built by the Italian company between 1991 and 1995.
Casil Motors is going to build 15 units of the SP-110 Edonis Fenice, which is a new supercar based on the Bugatti EB 110, but with updated styling and powertrain.
Bugatti was originally bought out by Romano Artioli in the late 1980s, and by 1991 the automaker was back building cars in the shape of the EB 110.
To put things into context, the EB 100 was about as far ahead of the game and its time as the Chiron is today. Back then it was rocking a 550hp quad-turbo 3.5-litre V-12, which propelled the car via four-wheel drive from 0 to 100kph in 3.2 seconds, and onwards to a top speed of 347kph.
Artioli and some former Bugatti engineers formed B Engineering, and after VW bought Bugatti in 1998, B Engineering bought the remaining EB 110 components and finally revealed the EB 110-based Edonis on New Year's day in 2000. Alas, that car never made it into production, and the Las Vegas-based Casil Motors has finally stepped in to finish the job B Engineering started with the new SP-110 Edonis Fenice.
The new car will be powered by a 3.8-litre version of the EB 110's V-12 engine, which is now a twin-turbo that puts out 720hp.
It will take a slightly longer 3.4 seconds to reach 100kph, although the top speed will be higher than the EB 100 at 354kph. Pricing hasn't been announced yet, but although a small deposit of just US$2,500 (RM9,700) is all that's required to get your name down for one of the 15, don't expect the car to come cheap.
