The Annual Monterey Issue

Bugatti Veyron Drive to Monterey 2012
Story & Photography by Greg Grudt
On Wednesday, August 15, 2012 a very rare
event occurred in Oxnard, CA. Five Bugatti Veyrons
pulled up to the Mullin Automotive Museum around
1:20pm before the long drive up to Monterey the following
day. e orange Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport
Vitesse (pictured on the front of the magazine) led the
pack, which included two standard Veyrons and two
Veyron Grand Sports. At the time, this was the very rst
sighting of a Grand Sport Vitesse in California. ere
have since been three sightings of such a car in California.
e Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse is the latest
agship model Bugatti with an extra 199 horsepower
from the previous 1001 horsepower in earlier models
and a price tag of nearly $2.5 million.
For those of you that are not aware, the
Mullin Automotive Museum houses one of the largest
collections of Bugattis in the world among other rare
French automobiles. On temporary loan from a private
individual from the United Kingdom was a World
Record Edition Bugatti Veyron Super Sport which is
1 of 5 produced. is incredibly rare automobile was
scheduled to join the drive up to Monterey, however the
owner backed out so I was unable to capture the shot of
all four generations of Veyrons lined up (Veyron 16.4,
Grand Sport, Super Sport, and Vitesse). Since the World
Record Edition Super Sport was upstairs in the museum
roughly 300 feet away from the other ve Bugattis
technically they were all together for the photo. I spent
a solid 3.5 hours photographing these cars until they
were ready to depart.
Around 4:00pm the catered lunch and private
tour of the museum had concluded and the Veyrons
red up and left. A good friend of mine, Duane Steiner
from Speed and Motion, was also on-site photographing
the cars. Since we had an itinerary from the Bugatti
Club, we thought it would be neat to follow them to
theFour Seasons in Santa Barbara where they would be
spending the evening. Duane drove as I hung out the
window capturing these amazing cars in motion on the
picturesque 101 Freeway. We encountered some trac
and a few of the Bugattis left us in the dust when the
trac cleared. We made it to Santa Barbara and spent
some time photographing these cars a little bit more. It
would have been fun to follow them the next morning
to Monterey, but you can’t do everything.
On Saturday, August 18, 2012, Duane and I
drove up to Monterey for the day to catch a glimpse of
the world famous “Car Week”. ere were so many cars
we wanted to see and only about seven hours to see
them all. Luckily, we saw just about every possible car
imaginable from Ferrari F50s to McLaren F1s and even
the only Koenigsegg Agera R in the United States but,
our trip would not have been complete without seeing a
few more Bugatti Veyrons, of course. While photograph-
ing the Koenigsegg Agera R on the 17 Mile Drive, we
noticed further down the road that a white and blue
Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse was being photographed by
a Bugatti photographer overlooking the Pacic Ocean.
We quickly drove over and joined in on the shoot. We
then hustled over to the Spanish Bay Inn Hotel which
is known as the hot spot for exotics during car week.
We pulled up and sure enough a black Veyron Grand
Sport with orange accents was parked in front. ere
were a handful of other exotics parked there as well.
We also spotted a bright red Pagani Huayra in the guest
parking lot too! Finally, we headed back to the Pebble
Beach Lodge as we wanted to see the Bugattis arrive for
the dinner. ere were three Veyrons parked outside
the Lodge and one of them I hadn’t seen before. It was
a very classy champagne colored one that I had only
seen pictures of in the past. I am so glad that I nally
got to see it in-person after all these years. e sun was
setting and our time in Monterey had come to an end as
we then endured the ve and half hour drive home. In
a ve day period I saw nine Bugatti Veyrons! Until next
year Monterey……
More photos can be found on www.exoticcarfotos.com
Please be sure to “Like” and follow my work on
Facebook: ExoticCarFotos