Most expensive cars in the world

La Rose Noire Droptail is officially the most expensive new car ever sold. Rolls-Royce built just four, each one commissioned by an individual customer and tailored to their tastes. In other words, it's less like ordering a new car and more like having a mansion designed from scratch. Or ordering a Five Guys for more than two people.

Its name comes from the Black Baccara rose, with the deep red paint appearing almost black until sunlight reveals a rich crimson shimmer. That colour theme continues inside, where 1,603 pieces of hand-laid wood veneer create a pattern inspired by, we’re told, falling rose petals. It’s all very pretentious and ridiculous, but it makes someone happy, so…

Rolls-Royce says the intricate wooden deck behind the seats took almost two years to perfect and – because decking is heavy – a huge 6.75-litre, twin-turbo V12 engine powers La Rose Noire Droptail. Weirdly, 590PS seems properly lacklustre in the age that also includes 640PS Hyundais, but the Royce is less about outright speed and more about… No, it's all about, in fact, owning a car that nobody else can. Still, imagine being blazed at the lights by a middle manager in a Korean EV. Gutted.

Another Rolls-Royce at number two, this time inspired by a yacht instead of a flower. We yearn for the day that, inspired by a London flat, Rolls-Royce makes a crew cab van. Until that day comes, there’s the Boat Tail.

Its rear end, shaped like the stern of a luxury yacht, opens out at the press of a button. Within you’ll find the world's most expensive picnic hamper, as well as a pair of cocktail tables, matching stools, a parasol and a bespoke refrigerator. For the Coke and cava.

Like the Droptail, production was etremely limited with only three Boat Tails built, each one designed around its owner's hobbies and tastes. One is said to have been commissioned by music royalty, although Rolls-Royce has never officially confirmed who signed the cheque. It probably wasn’t Marilyn Manson.

Underneath all the handcrafted aluminium bodywork sits the same 6.75-litre twin-turbo V12 used in Rolls-Royce's other luxury cars, producing around 570PS. Nobody buying one cares how quickly it reaches 62mph from a standstill anyway. The Boat Tail is a car designed for cruising slowly enough that everyone gets a good look at it, before stopping for a picnic in a retail park, opposite Sports Direct.

The first actual one-off on our list, the Bugatti La Voiture Noire has one of the most exotic sounding names ever committed to four wheels. It means 'the black car'... Oh, fair enough – it is black.

It was built in 2019 as a modern tribute to the legendary Bugatti Type 57 SC Atlantic, one of the rarest and most valuable classic cars ever made. The original disappeared before the Second World War and has never been found. Yep, somewhere out there, probably in a barn because old cars always end up in barns, there’s a rusting shell that’ll probably become the most expensive car ever sold.

Until then, this is the closest we get. Unlike the Rolls-Royces above, which are all about handcrafted luxury, this is all about speed. Its 8.0-litre 16-cylinder engine has four turbochargers and produces a scarcely believable 1500PS, enough to shove the car beyond 250mph.

Fun fact: That single La Voiture Noire was sold even before the public had even seen it. That’s a pretty cool flex for the owner, right?

Another Rolls-Royce – sorry, but it’s not our fault that it keeps making all of these ridiculously expensive cars. So, before the Boat Tail and La Rose Noire Droptail came along, there was the Sweptail – a model designed to remind billionaires that they could ask Rolls-Royce to build them anything, provided they arrived with a large enough chequebook. Not physically, obviously, although someone handing over a giant novelty cheque at a Rolls-Royce dealership, ideally while sat in a bathtub full of baked beans, is a fun mental image.

Commissioned by a private customer whose identity has never officially been revealed – so it could be David Brent for all we know – the Sweptail took almost four years to design and build. Rolls-Royce said the brief was inspired by luxury yachts – surprise surprise – as well as the most elegant cars of the 1920s and ‘30s.

The Sweptail's most striking feature is the enormous glass roof, which floods the cabin with light and reminds the occupants that they’re under the same sky as everyone else. Inside, you'll find handcrafted wood, polished metal and, of course, acres of real leather. There's even a secret compartment designed to hide the owner's favourite bottle of champagne. It too has the 6.75-litre V12 engine. Rolls-Royce never seems bothered about changing that particular detail. It’s almost common, you might say.

Back to Bugatti, although other manufacturers do make an appearance, we assure you. You'd think the company would be quite pleased after building – and managing to sell – 500 Chirons, but apparently not. Instead, it decided to make one more… Although the ‘one-off’ thing was more by accident than design.

See, the Chiron Profilee was originally intended to become a limited-edition model with a more relaxed personality than the hardcore Chiron Pur Sport. The idea was to make it a bit more comfortable to drive every day, sort of like when Converse started putting Nike insoles into its canvas shoes. Yes, exactly like that.

Bugatti changed its mind, though and the scrapped production plan left this single prototype as the only one ever built. Rather than hiding it away in a museum, Bugatti sold it, where it promptly became one of the most expensive new cars ever bought. It still packs Bugatti's mighty 8.0-litre, four-turbo, 16-cylinder engine with 1,500PS, enough to hit 62mph in around 2.3 seconds, but it is – in theory – a little more comfy with it. We are perfectly happy to road test it to find out. If you happen to be the owner, hit us up.

Another Bugatti. We know. Honestly, we considered pretending one of these was a guessied-up Ford Puma just to mix things up, but editors are funny about these things. 'Facts', apparently.

The Bugatti Centodieci – that's Italian for 110 – was built to celebrate 110 years of Bugatti, while also paying tribute to the legendary Bugatti EB110 from 1991. If you're wondering why they didn't just call it the Bugatti 110, we’re not sure, to be honest. Apparently 'Wideboy' was already taken by a snack of some sort.

Really though, look how wide it is. The Centodieci has a completely different body to the Chiron on which it’s based, complete with five circular air intakes behind the side windows that echo the original EB110 Super Sport. It's the sort of styling detail that someone with a Caffeine & Machine loyalty card will notice. You’ll be pleased, because everyone else that day was like 'oof! Where’d you get your Veyron’s bodykit from?'.

Power comes from the familiar 8.0-litre, quad-turbocharged 16-cylinder engine, here producing 1600PS. That's 100PS more than the Chiron, for what it’s worth. Just 10 examples were built and as usual with these things, all were spoken for before production even started.

KLAXON: Finally, a manufacturer that isn't Rolls-Royce or Bugatti.

First, then, the name. A word you can’t say without saying “dudes” afterwards. Go on, try it. Away from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pagani is a tiny Italian company that builds some of the most outrageous cars on the planet. Ironic, then, that its most expensive car, the Codalunga here, is actually one of its more restrained efforts.

Codalunga means 'long tail' in Italian, referring to the stretched rear bodywork that's designed to make the car look sleeker and more elegant. Unlike most modern hypercars, which unashamedly look to the future – and like door wedges – the Codalunga deliberately takes inspiration from racing cars of the 1960s. The result is surprisingly clean and relatively understated.

Power comes from a Mercedes-AMG-built 6.0-litre twin-turbo V12 producing 840PS. That's modest by the standards of modern hypercars, but the Codalunga is also significantly lighter than many of its rivals, so it doesn't exactly hang about: 0-62mph happens in 2.8 seconds.

Only five were built, each tailored to its owner's wishes. Good. If you'd spent nearly £6 million on a car, you'd want a say in what colour the seat stitching is. Bodacious.

You wait seven entries for a Pagani, then two come along at once. Like buses, in no way at all.

The Huayra Imola Roadster is named after Italy's famous race circuit, where Pagani says it completed the equivalent of more than 16,000 miles of hard testing before anyone was allowed to buy one. That’s reassuring, because at £4.9 million you'd hope they’d have taken it round the block a couple of times first.

Unlike the elegant Codalunga, the Imola Roadster looks like it's permanently trying to start an argument. There are vents, scoops, wings and aerodynamic add-ons absolutely everywhere, all there for the serious business of making it go faster. Some might argue it’s all a bit Temu. Some, but not us. No way.

The Mercedes-AMG-built 6.0-litre twin-turbo V12 produces 850PS, launching the Imola Roadster from 0-62mph in less than three seconds. The roof comes off, too, meaning you’ll hear absolutely every word spoken about you from the people on the streets. It’ll definitely all be overwhelmingly positive.

Another Bugatti. We know, we know, but there’s nothing we can do. To quote everyone on Love Island, 'it is what it is. Literally.'. The Divo is named after French racing driver Albert Divo, who won a race called the Targa Florio twice in the 1920s. It would have been much funnier if a man called Albert Steve had won it. The Bugatti Steve has a nice ring to it.

Unlike the Chiron, which was designed to be ridiculously fast in a straight line, the Divo was engineered to be better through corners. It's lighter, has stiffer suspension and produces far more aerodynamic downforce. A Bugatti track car, basically. And a proper common one at that. Fun fact: at 40 examples, there are more Divos on the road than there are divas in the entire cast of Dreamgirls.

No prize for guessing that it uses an 8.0-litre engine – 'the Bugatti engine' – but here, the top speed is actually limited to 236mph. Shameful.

The T.50s is the work of Gordon Murray Automotive, an eponymous car manufacturer taking its name from South African engineer behind the legendary McLaren F1 – arguably still the greatest road car ever made. This track-only version of the 'regular' T.50s road car is a tribute to the late triple Formula 1 world champion. Niki Lauda, who drove one of Murray's championship-winning Brabham racing cars back in the late-1970s. Albeit unsuccessfully.

The first thing you'll notice is the enormous fan on the back, which kind of looks like an air conditioning unit glued there as a placeholder while they invented the real thing. But it’s legit. It literally sucks air from underneath the car to help it stick to the track. So, think of this as the world's fastest Dyson, in lieu of the Dyson car that was supposed to happen a few years ago (remember that?).

Instead of chasing ever-bigger power figures with turbochargers, the T.50s uses a 4.0-litre V12 producing 772PS – no forced induction in sight – and capable of revving to an almost unbelievable 12,100rpm. That's less powerful than several cars on this list, but it's also much lighter, tipping the scales at under 900kg. And you have no idea how an engine spinning at that rate sounds until you actually hear it. It’s awesome.