Some cars are built to go fast. Others are built to mean something. The Bugatti W16 Mistral 'Le Retour du Jeune Prince' - The Return of the Young Prince - is a one-of-one commission from Bugatti's Sur Mesure programme, and it may be the most personal hypercar ever created. It began not with a mood board, but with a book.

A Commission Born from Literature

The creative process started in October 2023, in Molsheim, where the customer met with Jascha Straub, Manager of Sur Mesure and Individualization at Bugatti. The brief was built around the owner's own literary work, a sequel to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's beloved The Little Prince, in which the young prince returns from the moon to earth. That narrative of moonlight, stars, memory, and tenderness became the design language for every surface of the car.

Bugatti Sur Mesure is not a colour configurator. It is a deeply collaborative creative process, closer to haute couture than automotive specification, where a customer's personal story is translated into a one-of-one object. Every previous commission has been different. This one is perhaps the most intimate the programme has ever produced.

What Bugatti Built

The exterior begins with a completely bespoke copper and bronze colorway, developed specifically for this car. The earthy metallic tones were conceived to evoke the warm glow of lunar light, shifting and deepening as daylight moves across the Mistral's sculpted surfaces. The legendary horseshoe grille retains its architecture but was redesigned so its internal 3D lines follow the dynamic upward flow of the hood, drawing the eye forward in one continuous motion. The Bugatti Macaron on the grille is outlined in gold. Copper brake calipers and matching EB emblems on each wheel centre add quiet continuity throughout.

Moving to the rear, the lunar inspiration becomes explicit. A constellation of silver stars has been applied by hand across the rear bodywork and upper wing surface, an intricate, time-consuming process of layering and refinement that required extraordinary expertise. Then there is the hidden detail. When the airbrake deploys at speed, a concealed composition becomes visible on the underside of the wing, a reinterpretation of the most iconic scene from Saint-Exupéry's original story, the prince and the fox. Even the W16 engine bay carries hand-engraved motifs of the story's main characters.

Inside, the cabin is finished in two leather tones: Terre d'Or, light and luminous, and Driftwood, darker and more grounding. Moon motifs are embroidered into the door panels. Constellations are hand-stitched into the headrests. The centre console features star details inlaid into brown carbon weave. Every surface belongs to the same creative world.

The centrepiece of the interior is the gear shifter. Encased within it is a miniature silver rose, sculpted from a 3D scan of a real flower and recreated in silver with extraordinary precision. It sits on the back of the shifter, invisible from most angles. That is exactly the point. It is there because it means something, not because anyone will see it.

The Last of Its Kind

Beneath all of this craftsmanship sits the 8.0-litre quad-turbocharged W16 engine, producing 1,578 hp and capable of 260 mph. The W16 Mistral is limited to 99 units and represents the final production chapter of this legendary powertrain. Bugatti is retiring the W16 in favour of the new Tourbillon's V16 hybrid architecture, which means every remaining Sur Mesure W16 commission is now one of the very last opportunities to own a bespoke, purpose-built Bugatti powered by the engine that defined the hypercar era.