Its cars are some of the fastest, most exclusive and outrageously beautiful ever to grace the roads, and it celebrates its centenary this year. Ian Bartholomew and Stuart Milne bring you 100 years of Bugatti in pictures.

When Bugatti announced it was building a 1,000bhp, 250mph car, petrolheads could barely believe it. But that was nothing compared to the shock of what the car could actually do.

The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 didn’t so much rewrite the rules, rather bury the rule book and wheelspin over its grave. Its figures are mind-bending: 987bhp, 253mph, 0-62 in 2.5 seconds...

But Bugatti is about more than the Veyron. It was founded by Ettore Bugatti in 1909 who had already produced two prototypes. Its first road car came in 1910, the Type 13, and a race version was built in the same year.

And that set the scene for the next few decades – building exquisite luxury and sports cars for the road, and bare-knuckle grand prix rockets for the track.

The brand went away in the 1960s, a victim of sales and acquisitions until the late 1980s when the legendary Bugatti EB110 burst onto the scene. The Bug was back – but not for long, falling victim to the recession in the mid-nineties. Volkswagen bought Bugatti in 1998 and set about building some concepts.

The ungainly EB118 looked part Veyron, part Citroen C6 and part Bentley Continental GT and was followed by the equally ungainly EB218.

In 2000, Volkswagen’s boss, Ferdinand Piech announced a 1,000bhp supercar to conquer all, and a year later VW announced it would be launched in 2003. Delays and management changes meant it wouldn’t see the light of day until 2005.

But it was worth the wait. The €1,000,000 machine has been described as the car world’s Concorde moment.

There may be faster cars, but none built with theastonishing attention to detail that the Bugatti Veyron affords.