As Donald Trump would say: “fake news”.

A picture of a totalled Bugatti Divo on the back of a flatbed truck has gone viral in internet car circles today, leading to outcry that one of the 40 €5million hypercars had already met an untimely end.

Thankfully, that’s not the case. The picture is the work London-based automotive designer/concept artist Yasid Design, who first posted the picture on his Instagram account with the caption “God Dammit. Well, I guess this Divo was a good one while it lasted.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bnl_bVlBsry/?utm_source=ig_embed_loading

The clue to the ruse is in the hashtag #carrendering. Yasid has been upfront that it’s a forgery in the comments, however, plenty haven’t bothered to read that far and the picture has spread like wildfire, helped by the fact the picture’s location was tagged as “Los Angeles, California”, close to where the Divo made its public debut during Monterey Car Week.

Yasid told MOTOR the picture is “just a fun render that I did to create a buzz”, but it serves as an interesting case study of how quickly online information can spread and be accepted as fact.

Bugatti Divo

All 40 examples of the Divo were pre-sold by the time it made its public debut. Not a bad way to generate €200m in revenue!