The Screen Door
The most expensive new car in the world has a touchscreen. It just doesn't want you to see it.
The Bugatti Tourbillon hides its screen inside the dashboard. You ask for it, it slides out. You're done, it disappears. Everything you actually look at while driving is analog, built with Swiss watchmakers.
I understand the headaches with interfaces in cars. It's CarPlay vs touchscreens vs knobs and buttons, and you can't make everyone happy. But I didn't expect embarrassment. I didn't expect the new supercars to be hiding theirs behind a screen door.
So let's all put our super rich caps on for a minute. Not I, said the ST Line.
Bugatti Rimac CEO Mate Rimac told CNBC last week that supercars are entering their "Swiss watch phase." The rich are steering away from high tech and steering into precision and mechanics. A smartwatch beats a Swiss watch at every single thing a watch does, and people with money keep buying the Swiss watch anyway.
The man saying this is 38 and started out converting a broken BMW to electric power. He also builds the all-electric Nevera on the same line as the V16.
Nobody has ever bought a Bugatti for the head-up display.
You buy a Bugatti A) because you can, B) because it goes 250 and you had a poster of one in your room growing up, and C) because it was pretty fun to drive in Forza on the Xbox 360.
In the auto show piece I said that when the Scholastic book fair came around, you just needed enough money for the Ferrari poster. Same kid. Same instinct.
In July I wrote about Slate, which is building a $24,950 truck with no touchscreen in it at all. Slate skips the screen because a screen costs money.
The Tourbillon starts at 3.8 million euros and hides its screen because a screen cheapens the room.
Opposite ends of the price ladder, opposite reasons, same answer. So who's still getting the giant touchscreen? The Edge. The X5 they handed me at the rental counter. The Fathom, which keeps the screen and goes hunting for its savings out on the factory floor instead. Everything a normal person actually buys.
The rich opted out. The bargain hunters opted out. We're the ones still paying for it.
Another thought I had reading this. What if the ultimate status symbol ends up being a gas powered car?
It makes sense. If EVs are the future and we can buy them cheap, companies are only going to focus their gas cars on the top line. Nobody's hand-building a V16 for a $30,000 commuter.
Worth saying the Tourbillon is a hybrid, 1,800 horsepower combined. They're not rejecting electric motors, they're rejecting battery only.
Either way, I can't wait to brag to my grandkids that I drove a gas powered car.
And how much more tech can we do? Seriously, who wants it?
I spent ten or fifteen minutes in that X5 getting the gauge cluster to show me speed and directions, using the buttons all over the steering wheel, and then I never touched one of them again. There's a rotary dial by the console too, for controlling the screen without reaching for it. I think I used it once, by accident.
In the Mustang piece I said I'm against replacing physical gauges, that my Edge still has the needle, and that I plan on defending it. I meant it. I just didn't expect the four million dollar car to show up on my side of it.
There's still more coming whether we asked or not. But we're hearing it from the rich, and they don't care. They want louder, faster, stronger.
That's what a sports car is. It turns your head wherever you are. Your ears are basically telling you, you have to see this.
That Mustang had the paddle shifters, the head-up display, three exhaust modes, all of it. The thing I still talk about is how good it sounded starting up.
My ears have never once told me to turn around because of a touchscreen.
Windows down.
What's the one physical button your car took away from you? Write me: jp@bauerdrive.com