A hypercar as a personal book on wheels: meet Bugatti's Little Prince Mistral
A one-off W16 Mistral roadster built through Sur Mesure: copper-bronze body with hidden silver stars, a silver rose in the shifter, and the final 1,600-hp W16 underneath.
Bugatti has revealed yet another one-off W16 Mistral — Le Retour du Jeune Prince, or “The Return of the Young Prince.” The roadster was commissioned by a writer inspired both by his own work and by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince.
The project was carried out through the Sur Mesure programme. The idea took shape back in October 2023 in Molsheim, where the client sat down with the personalisation department to discuss colours, atmosphere and details. The end result is a copper-bronze body with an almost mirror-like metallic shine, a gold outline on the Bugatti Macaron emblem, copper brake calipers and EB badges on the wheels.
The real magic isn’t visible from the outside. Tiny silver stars are embedded into the paintwork, and when the active air brake rises, it reveals a composition based on the scene with the prince and the fox. The cabin is finished in Terre d’Or and Driftwood shades, with leather embroidered with stars and brown carbon trim. A silver rose — a miniature sculpture created from a 3D scan of a real flower — is set into the gear selector.
The mechanicals are unchanged, and that’s actually a good thing for the W16’s final chapter. Behind the passengers sits an 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16 producing 1,600 hp and 1,600 Nm. The Mistral hits 97 km/h in 2.3 seconds, covers 402 m in 8.9 seconds and tops out at 420 km/h. No hybrid assistance — just a massive engine that Bugatti is slowly bidding farewell to.
The price of this particular example hasn’t been disclosed. A standard W16 Mistral starts at around $5 million before any personalisation. Bugatti will build only 99 of these roadsters in total, and every single one turns into a collector’s object in its own right.
This Mistral isn’t interesting because it’s any faster. It shows something else: in a world where cars are increasingly judged by batteries, regulations and unit costs, someone still orders a hypercar as a personal book on wheels.