A Single Bugatti Chiron Super Sport Has Been Recalled For Having The Wrong Wheels

A recall notice from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been issued for a solitary Bugatti Chiron Super Sport that was mistakenly ordered with incorrect wheels. According to a letter sent to Bugatti North America's after-sales business manager, the NHTSA says, "When driving in Top Speed Mode, the incorrect wheels may result in a loss of vehicle control and increase the risk of a crash."

After exhaustive testing, Bugatti only approved two types of wheels for the Super Sport and the Super Sport 300+, but somehow, the relatively basic BBS Leichtbaurad wheel approved for the base Chiron was selectable on the US configurator. Obviously, somebody thought these looked great, and not knowing any better, they ticked the box.

Naturally, Bugatti will rectify this issue at no cost by sending over the correct wheels, a new set of tires, and new valves and sensors.

This got us thinking. Which other peculiar scenarios have seen an automaker recall just a single car?

As seen in the below tweet, a single Suzuki Cappuccino (notable for its high-revving engine) was recalled in 2017 after being on the road for some 21 years. It's unclear how it slipped past factory inspections, but the 1996 roadster was shipped without a stamp on the K6A engine block. Suzuki only became aware of this more than two decades after the car was shipped, but being Japanese, the automaker could not live with the dishonor of such a trivial mistake and opened a recall campaign with the vehicle's serial number and diagrams of where the engine code should have been imprinted. Whoever owned the car was given a new block with the correct stamping, which presumably would have meant an entire engine. It's a strange recall, but we love it, and we bet the affected owner was pretty pleased too.

This is another high-powered hypercar where you don't want anything to go wrong with the wheels or tires, but that's exactly what could have happened in the case of a single Koenigsegg Agera. In 2014, USA Today reported that a 2013 Agera had been recalled for an iffy tire pressure monitoring system. The issue was that the tire pressure monitoring light might not illuminate after the car is restarted. Thankfully, this was a lot easier to fix than the abovementioned Cappuccino's issue; a simple software update resolved the problem.

Earlier this year, Jaguar Land Rover (before the parent company renamed itself JLR) recalled the Land Rover Range Rover for an incorrectly installed or missing gasket on the turbo oil drain pipe, which could result in an oil leak. According to the NHTSA recall notice, only one example was affected in the US. There was another vehicle with the same problem, but the notice did not reveal its location.

As we reported at the time, JLR's supplier (in this case, BMW) informed the British automaker that three of the 4.4-liter V8s it had supplied had the issue. JLR promptly inspected these and resolved the problem, but a month after the first notification, the engine supplier said another two engines had the same issue.

Even with BMW engines, JLR products seem determined to mark their territory with regular oil leaks. All kidding aside, BMW supplying powertrains should be good for JLR's reliability ratings in the future.

In March of this year, a single Mercedes-Benz S-Class (specifically a 2021 S 580 4Matic) was recalled because the glass panel between the windshield and the panoramic sunroof may not have been properly secured and may therefore detach. As with other recalls of this nature, the NHTSA notice reads that it's a relatively simple fix that sees the panel replaced, but it is rather unusual for a company as obsessed with quality as Mercedes.

In fact, most of these one-off recalls are somewhat surprising. Bugatti allowing the incorrect wheels to be specced is unheard of; a Japanese automaker failing to notice an issue for decades is astonishing; and Mercedes selling an imperfect S-Class is just plain odd.

It just goes to show that whether you're producing a mass-market kei car, a low-volume hypercar, or a luxury executive sedan/SUV, mistakes can happen to the best of us, and these automakers are certainly among the finest.