The Bugatti Veyron is a great car, but not a profitable one. Bugatti The gorgeous Bugatti Veyron is the fastest and most powerful production car on the planet.

And it's an absolute money pit.

According to a recent report from Wall Street research firm Bernstein Research, Bugatti (and its parent company Volkswagen) loses a whopping $6.24 million for every Veyron it sells.

Take that number with a big grain of salt. The authors of the report warn, "Don't take these numbers too seriously," explaining that their estimates "are obviously very, very approximate."

But, they say, "we've tried to be reasonably systematic about it."

A spokesperson for Bugatti said the company does not supply financial data, but added, " The quoted figures of Bernstein Research are not plausible."

The report calls the Veyron "the most ambitious and complex vehicle ever put on sale," and "a tour de force of engineering." Last month, BBC Top Gear magazine editors and readers named it the greatest car of the last 20 years. It's easy to argue it's the most impressive car ever made.

So how could a great car with a price tag around $1.5 million lose so much money? The analysts put the blame on enormous R&D costs (about $1.62 billion), and very low volume (Bugatti has sold about 40 Veyrons annually since 2009).