Mat Armstrong has made a career out of buying cars that everyone else has given up on and fixing them for a fraction of what the official quote demands. He rebuilt a Porsche 918. He is currently deep into what may be the most ambitious private rebuild in YouTube history, a crashed Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport that Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac publicly said could not be done outside a factory. GaukMotorBuzz has been following that saga closely.
His latest acquisition sits at the other end of the complexity scale, at least in terms of the actual solution.
Armstrong bought a repossessed Bugatti Veyron, his second Bugatti, from a repossession company for what he describes as "a significantly lower price." In the world of Veyrons that phrase covers a wide range of territory, but the car came with a known problem that had been quoted at somewhere between $300,000 and $350,000 to repair. According to Supercar Blondie, that quote related to the gearbox, and it was the reason the car had ended up with a repossession company in the first place. The rest of the car was reportedly in excellent shape, clean exterior, good interior, engine that started.
The gearbox, though, showed a catalogue of faults ranging from what Armstrong himself described as "nuisance" to "catastrophic."
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He started investigating. And what he found was not a destroyed gearbox. It was a blown fuse.
Armstrong drove to Halfords, the British auto parts retailer, and bought a fuse. As he put it in the video:
"And I just got a fuse from Halfords."
The gearbox faults cleared. The car works.
The repair bill went from £350,000 ($460,000) to approximately $2.
This is, to be fair, a best case scenario that required someone confident and methodical enough to diagnose the actual fault rather than simply accept the terrifying number a specialist produces when you bring them a broken Bugatti. The Veyron's gearbox is a seven speed dual clutch unit developed specifically for the car, and a genuine failure would indeed cost a ruinous amount to address. The W16 engine produces over 1,000 horsepower and the transmission has to handle all of it repeatedly without complaint. When something flags a fault, the natural assumption is that the problem is real and expensive.
What Armstrong demonstrated is that the assumption was wrong in this case and that whoever surrendered the car to a repossession company either did not know that, or knew it and walked away anyway.
The full video is on his YouTube channel and is worth watching for the diagnostic process alone, quite apart from the moment the faults clear.
Armstrong now owns two Bugattis simultaneously: the Veyron that cost him a fuse, and the Chiron Pur Sport rebuild that has so far involved splitting the car in half, arguing with the manufacturer, sourcing parts that Bugatti refused to supply, and TIG welding a component that was specifically engineered to break in a crash. The contrast between those two projects is fairly remarkable.
The old adage about Bugattis is that if you cannot afford a new one you definitely cannot afford a used one. Armstrong keeps finding the exceptions.
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