Bugatti Veyron operating costs so expensive, it's cheaper to use a private jet?

There are frightening bills, horrific bills, and Bugatti Veyron bills. The legendarily expensive to buy, it seems that the Veyron is equally expensive to keep running, with some pegging yearly running costs at $300,000. It's so expensive, in fact, that Autocar says there's an owner who trailers his car to a particular driving route, then follows behind in a private jet.

Let's just take the tires, for example: in the U.S., the Michelin Pilot Sport 2s fashioned with the Veyron's unique compound cost about $30,000; in the UK they're £23,500 ($38,216 U.S.). Bugatti recommends you change them every 4,000 kilometers, or 2,500 miles, and at every ten thousand miles the company recommends changing the wheels and tires, which runs north of $50,000.

In between those wheel changes will be things like routine maintenance, with a major annual service setting you back about $20,000. None of this is particularly unexpected so long as you remember the Veyron is more a roadgoing Space Shuttle than a car. And we won't even begin to talk about how expensive pelican insurance has become...

Photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright ©2010 Weblogs, Inc.
[Source: Autocar]