Bugatti: 1,001 horsepower, $1.24 million

[alm]

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Volkswagen's latest product probably won't be very good on gas and it has a rather high price tag. But that hasn't stopped a handful of people from putting down payments on the car before production started earlier this month.

Each Bugatti Veyron 16.4 will cost an estimated $1.24 million, according to media reports. For that, buyers will get an all-wheel-drive two-seat sports car with a lightweight carbon-fiber body and 16-cylinder engine capable of producing 1,001 horsepower.

VW purchased the Bugatti name in 1998, according to a report in the industry newspaper Automotive News Europe, and introduced a concept version of the Veyron at the Tokyo auto show the following year.

It has taken the intervening six years to perfect the car, according to the Automotive News report and others, and there had been doubts that the car would ever actually be sold. In a 2003 public debut at Laguna Seca Raceway, a prototype Veyron spun out of control.

In 2003, according to Automotive News, the car still suffered from two major problems: The enormous engine tended to overheat and the car, capable of top a speed of well in excess of 200 miles per hour, was unstable at high speeds. Several reports have placed the car's top speed at about 250 miles per hour.

The Bugatti name originated with a company that built high-performance cars from 1910 to 1956. Bugatti now operates in the same Alsace region, now part of France, in which the original Bugattis were made.

The company announced that it will build a four-door version of the car in the future, according to a report on Edmunds.com's Inside Line Website.