Floyd Mayweather’s Veyrons Hit the Sales Floor of the Luxury Auto Collection
Want a Bugatti Veyron? How about two, both from the corner of a champion?
John Schlitt, president of the Luxury Auto Collection at the Scottsdale Airpark, has them waiting for their next owner(s), and both have the punch and panache to take on all challengers.
Owned by Floyd Mayweather Jr., the retired professional fighter and greatest welterweight champion ever, these supercars among supercars are a 2011 Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport and a 2015 Bugatti Grand Sport Vitesse, the last representing the final year of production of a vehicle BBC’s Top Gear named Car of the Decade for 2000–2009 (luxuryautocollection.com).
Schlitt, the former general manager of Scottsdale Ferrari, built a relationship with Mayweather on the set of All Star Weekend, Jamie Foxx’s directorial debut feature film, scheduled for release in the summer of 2017. The Luxury Auto Collection provided exotic cars.
“We called the champ on December 30 to see if he was interested in selling his Bugattis,” Schlitt recalls. “We discussed the figures and viewed the cars over on FaceTime and struck a deal with him in literally 15 minutes.
A few hours later, Schlitt was on plane and met the champ at his home to load the cars. “As you can imagine, spending the day with the champ at his estate with his lavish collection of fine automobiles and seeing how meticulously he maintains his collection and his estate was absolutely amazing,” he says.
Pierre Veyron was a Bugatti development engineer, test driver and race driver for the company, founded by Ettore Bugatti in 1909 in Molsheim, France. He and Jean-Pierre Wimille won the 1939 24 hours of Le Mans driving a Bugatti Type 57C Tank.
The Veyron has consistently been the world’s fastest production car in the Guinness Book of World Records (luxuryautocollection.com). What makes these four-wheel-drive cars capable of far exceeding 200 mph is the 8.0-litre, quad-turbocharged, 16-cylinder engine, configured as two connected V-8s, each cylinder with four valves and four camshafts.
A dual-clutch direct-shift gearbox computer-controlled automatic Ricardo transmission features seven gear ratios. The driver engages these with magnesium paddles behind the steering wheel, choosing semi-automatic or fully automatic mode.
The car’s numbers are staggering: 487.5 cubic-inch displacement; a wheelbase of 106.7 inches and overall length of 175.7 inches; four turbochargers; three heat exchangers for the air-to-liquid intercoolers; three engine radiators; a radiator for the air-conditioning; a transmission oil radiator; and a differential oil radiator.
Of course, these royalty of high-performance transportation are not for everyone, and the numbers again are high performance. Its Michelin run-flats, for instance, are $25,000 a set, Wikipedia says.
The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse, a version of the earlier special-edition Grand Sport, debuted at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show. Its Super Sport engine produces 1250 horses @ 6,400 rpm and a maximum torque of 1,100 lb/ft @ 3,000-5,000 rpm.
That allows you to put about everything else on Earth in your rearview mirror, with 0−62 mph standing in just 2.6 seconds. Normally, the Vitesse is electronically limited to 233 mph, but this can be overridden in both cars by a driver who feels capable of such stratospheric speed (luxuryautocollection.com).
“You guys are in business because you do good business,” says Mayweather, since 2007 owner of Mayweather Productions, which promotes fights.
During his extraordinary pugilistic career, 1996 to 2015, he was undefeated, 26–0, with 10 knockouts in world title fights, was a five-division world champion and won 15 world titles.
Many call him the best pound-for-pound fighter ever, The Ring magazine made him Fighter of the Year in 1998 and 2007, and the Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA) awarded him Fighter of the Year in 2007, 2013 and 2015.
Mayweather’s great cars join another 150 super high-end vehicles for sale at the Luxury Auto Collection, which is based in 20,000 square feet of hangar space in the Scottsdale Airpark, conveniently near the events and auctions for Arizona Auto Week (luxuryautocollection.com).
“As a family-owned and operated business, we strive for the full customer experiences and competitive national pricing, with a friendly and knowledgeable staff,” says Schlitt, who employs 14, including salespeople, technicians and administrative staff.
“I am constantly searching the country for unique cars and rare opportunities to bring these cars to market. I have been very fortunate to have these opportunities and relationship that have come together over the years,” he adds. “And, we’re always open for our customers to come view our inventory, including these remarkable Bugattis.”
Even among the special cars that are the Luxury Auto Collection, the Mayweather Veyrons are very special, indeed: “First there’s the horsepower, the 2011 with 1,000 and the 2015 with 1250,” Schlitt explains.
“Then there’s the run: just 450 cars made from 2006− 2015, and only 100 came to the USA.” What’s more, this is the only 2015 Veyron Vitesse on the market in the U.S., and the 2011 is one of just two for sale here, he adds.
“And the fact they were owned by the champ: Enough said.”
For more information on the Mayweather Veyrons and other inventory at the Luxury Collection, see luxuryautocollection.com, call 480.448.9855 or email John Schlitt at John@LACScottsdale.com. Instagram is #LACScottsdale.