We can tell you from personal experience that collecting 1:18 scale (or 18 times smaller than the real thing) model cars is a fun hobby. They’re just big enough for lots of detail, yet small enough to not take up a massive amount of shelf space. Plus, they’re fairly affordable (handbuilt wonders from the likes of CMC and Exoto excluded). In fact, we can’t think of a single model that’s worth anywhere near the kind of coin its fullsize counterpart is…

Apparently, that factoid annoyed Munich, Germany’s Robert Gulpen and Liverpool, England’s Stuart Hughes enough that they decided to craft a trio of 1:18 scale Bugatti Veyrons…out of solid gold. Almost everything visible is made out of 24 karat gold or platinum, and some of the bits that aren’t visible are hiding behind the 7.2 karats worth of diamonds found in the front grille and elsewhere.

But just in case the bling-intensive construction wasn’t enough to impress you, note that these babies are just like most conventional diecast 1:18 autos in that they feature opening doors, hood, trunk and working steering. Unlike the replicas you can occasionally find at Target or Costco, however, these Bugs will set you back more than $20. In fact, they’ll set you back approximately $2.9 million.

Yes, Virginia, that’s about double the cost of a new real one. When you consider the fact that you and a passenger can actually fit inside a real one and drive it somewhere, it becomes even more of a bargain. Then again, the replica doesn’t need any gas (the real one does, and lots of it), it won’t take up an entire garage space, and it might come in handy when the dollar reaches a 1:1 exchange rate with the yen. If only those of us who aren’t loaded could be faced with these kinds of dilemmas…

Source: Stuart Hughes