Third gear, 3,600 rpm. Floor the gas pedal.Whoomp!You’re shoved into the seat with colossal force. A stupendous roar like an erupting volcano is at your back. The scenery blurs in your peripheral vision, and your neck muscles strain to hold your head clear of the headrest as the tach needle breezes past 6,000 rpm and storms toward the 7,100-rpm redline. Snick the right-hand paddle to upshift, lift off, and breathe. Check the readout in the center console. It says 6,866 rpm and 1,581 hp.
There will be future Bugattis that will have more power, that will shave whole tenths of a second off the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport’s acceleration times. But they will never be like the Chiron Super Sport.
They’ll be cars propelled by streaming electrons and spinning armatures, cars propelled by the smooth and silent symphony of the subatomic world. They won’t be dancing on the edge of destruction a thousand times a second, turning the explosive power of gasoline and air violently compressed and set on fire into a harmonious fusion of power and torque and forward motion.
2022 Bugatti Chiron Super Sport Review: The Most Dignified 1,578 HP You’ll Never Drive
The last of its kind races into history.Scott EvansWriter
Renz DimaandalPhotographerJan 11, 2022
You need not watch a single Western film to understand the visual metaphor of the hero riding off into the sunset. Once their work is done, the story concludes and they leave the audience behind as the sun sets and the screen fades to black. Sometimes, they ride off slowly, other times they charge off into the unknown. When your story’s hero is the 2022 Bugatti Chiron Super Sport, the last of its kind, racing into the sunset at 273 mph is the only way to go.
After all, this is as much a goodbye as it is a hello. The Super Sport is a new twist on the Chiron formula that’ll keep Bugatti craftspeople busy for years to come, but it’s also the end of the line. With the company’s controlling stake sold to electric supercar startup Rimac, the Super Sport is not only the last Chiron, but in all likelihood the last purely combustion-powered Bugatti road car (the Chiron-based Bolide coming in 2024 will be a track car only).
Following on the heels of the record-breaking Super Sport 300+ and the brand-redefining Pur Sport, you may be tempted to think of the Super Sport as a bit of a letdown, but you’d be wrong. Limited to only 273.4 mph, it’s nowhere near as fast as the 304-mph Super Sport 300+; and absent the fixed wing, weight savings, and high-grip tires of the Pur Sport, it’s not as corner-focused. What it is, however, is a delicious blending of those two cars.
The Most Complete Chiron
Developed with learnings from both the 300+ and the Pur Sport, the Super Sport is the Chiron lineup’s tour de force. Where either prior model falls short, be it in top speed or handling, the Super Sport steps in. It may be second best at both in absolute terms, but it’s the clear leader as a complete car.
You can see the melding of purposes when you look at it. Like the 300+, the Super Sport gets a new rear bumper that extends the bodywork nearly 10 extra inches to allow for both a larger rear diffuser and greater taper in the roofline. The longtail treatment, combined with revisions up front, like a similarly enlarged splitter and EB110 SS-inspired fender vents, gives the Super Sport the aerodynamics it needs for top speed runs.
Look closer, or start driving, and you’ll find it retains a movable rear wing that doubles as an air brake, because this car isn’t just about terminal velocity. Likewise, it wears tires fortified to withstand the extreme forces applied at 273 mph but also made of a stickier compound so they can still handle turns at lower speeds. Behind the Super Sport-exclusive wheels are stiffer rear springs, steering calibrated for extreme speeds, and adjustable dampers controlled by programs lifted from both the 300+ and the Pur Sport and applied as needed.
Select Your Mode Wisely
The need is, of course, dictated by the driver. Slip inside and adjust the delightfully weighted and self-righting knob on the steering wheel for the day’s work: EB for milling about, Handling for back roads and racetracks (primarily the latter), Autobahn for extended high-speed cruising, and Top Speed, which as always must be double-confirmed by inserting a key into a special switch below the driver’s left thigh.
Truth be told, the selector knob will get its biggest workout performing its most important function: activating the nose lift system before traversing speed bumps and steep driveways. If the presence of such a device weren’t enough to make you nervous about damaging the carbon-fiber nose, bear in mind the car lowers itself even further in Handling mode.
Handling mode you can quite honestly save for the track. EB mode (for founder Ettore Bugatti), is exceedingly capable, especially once you slot the shifter over into its Sport mode. So adjusted, the Chiron Super Sport’s nature changes. Gone is the shockingly demure boulevard cruiser, replaced with an assertive corner specialist. Higher gears are forsaken, engine revs are forbidden from dropping below 2,500 or so, and the car waits with bated breath for your input—ready to leap in any direction at the slightest indication of your desire.
Drive Fast, Drive Delicately
That’s what’s truly marvelous and unexpected about this car: It drives delicately. That’s not a phrase you’d ever think to use around a car that carries such intimidating numbers, unless you’re talking about the $222,500 paint or the even more expensive bodywork. But no, somehow this 1,578-hp, quad-turbocharged, 16-cylinder, 273-mph car that hits 60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds is putty in your hands.
There’s absolutely no need to wrestle with this car, no matter how fast you’re going. It doesn’t need to be forced, it needs to be caressed. Brush the throttle and brake pedals with the toe of your shoe. Hold the wheel by your fingertips and gently guide it through its arc. Flick the paddle shifters as you’d whisk a crumb from your table. Angry, ham-fisted inputs will only make you look like a fool.
Counterintuitive as it sounds, the Chiron’s massive powerplant—wrapped in an even more massive car—shrinks around you as the road bends. As hard as it is to park, it’s inversely easy to drive up a narrow canyon road. The steering is light and incredibly precise, completely unfazed by the absurd amount of engine power sent to the front wheels. The body remains flat through corners like a lighter, smaller supercar, but without the usual flinty ride. The precision of movement in every axis just isn’t what you expect from something this large, this heavy, this powerful.
If you want giggle-inducing power, it isn’t hard to get. Anything more than a kiss of the throttle pedal will get you enormous forward thrust if you have the revs up. Stay in it, and the latest, greatest, and probably last electrically unassisted iteration of Bugatti’s fearsome W-16 engine makes peak torque from 2,000 rpm all the way to 7,000 rpm and peak horsepower just 50 rpm shy of its 7,100-rpm redline.
What’s surprising is that in 2022 this car has the turbo lag of a 40-year-old Porsche 911 Turbo at low rpm. Despite the redesigned impeller wheels in the enlarged turbos and their staggered two-stage engagement, dropping the hammer while trundling around does not result in acceleration to hyperspace. It’s several confusing beats until anything special happens, but when the bass drops, it’ll chirp all four tires. Commit to it, and the otherworldly surge of acceleration will make even the most jaded Tesla owner giggle. Then, it grabs the next gear, and the 0.3-second dip in boost (yes, Bugatti measured it) is just long enough to make the return to full power feel even more apocryphal.
Insanely Dignified Performance
Stay committed for more than a literal few seconds, and you’ll be traveling over 100 mph. In less than 10 seconds, the time it takes some brand-new cars to reach freeway speeds, you’ll be doing 150 mph. Such a tiny window of time in which to experience this car’s potential—and the equally scant windows in traffic and weather that would allow for it—will keep you chasing the dragon the length of your drive and the length of your possession of the car.
And while it will chirp all four massive tires simultaneously, that’s as out of control as it gets. How street tires can control power like this while simultaneously keeping a coupe that weighs as much as a luxury sedan neutral through corners and stopping all that mass like a track day special is a secret only Michelin knows. The grip, in any direction you ask of it, is simply phenomenal and begs you to test it. The more you do, the more you realize just how massively you’ve underestimated it.
In a world in which incalculably less expensive cars can also accelerate this quickly and in which there are approximately three places on Earth where you could ever hope to visit the far end of the Chiron Super Sport’s analog speedometer, the fact this car handles as well as does is what sets it apart. People who only care about being the fastest have already bought up all 30 Super Sport 300+ copies, and those who want their Bugatti to drive like a McLaren with twice the power have bought up all 60 Pur Sports. Those who don’t want to have to choose have the Super Sport, which will no doubt be sold out between the time we finish typing this sentence and the time you read it. (Update: It did.)
This is not, then, Bugatti going gently into that good night. It is not a whimper, nor is it a disappointment. This is Bugatti raging against the dying of the light in the only way it knows how: with the most dignified 1,578 horsepower the world has ever known.
| 2022 Bugatti Chiron Super Sport Specifications | |
| BASE PRICE | $3,825,000 |
| LAYOUT | Mid-engine, AWD, 2-pass, 2-door coupe |
| ENGINE | 8.0L/1,578-hp/1,180-lb-ft quad-turbo direct-injected DOHC 64-valve W-16 |
| TRANSMISSION | 7-speed twin-clutch auto |
| CURB WEIGHT | 4,400 lb (MT est) |
| WHEELBASE | 106.7 in |
| L x W x H | 188.7 x 80.2 x 47.7 in |
| 0-60 MPH | 2.4 sec (mfr est) |
| EPA FUEL ECON | 8/11/9 mpg |
| ON SALE | Now |
Bugatti Chiron Sport vs. Chiron Pur Sport: This Changes Everything
Think of it as less of a comparison and more of a rebranding.Jonny LiebermanWriter
ManufacturerPhotographerMar 05, 2021
Some emails are better than others. Case in point, when the Bugatti public relations person asks if you’d like to compare and contrast the Bugatti Chiron Sport against the new ChironPur Sport (pronounced “pure sport”), well folks, that’s a pretty good email. Yes, I spent a day driving two cars that between them have 3,000 hp, 32 cylinders, eight turbochargers, 128 valves, 20 radiators, and cost north of $7,800,000. That’s $3,757,150 for the exposed blue carbon-fiber Chiron Sport and $3,959,000 for the Jet Grey Pur Sport, so you know. We’ll get to the difference between them in good time, but first I’d like to tell you a little story about the first time I drove a Bugatti.
A Veyron Affair
In 2010, Bugatti unveiled the Veyron Super Sport at that year’s Pebble Beach hootenanny. The ultimate Veyron was fresh off its (then) record-setting top-speed assault, where Pierre-Henri Raphanel piloted the 1,200-hp mega-thing to a Guinness-certified top speed of 268 mph. I was a guest of Bentley at Pebble that year, and as it happened, at dinner I sat directly across from Dr.-Ing. Franz-Josef Paefgen (pronounced “peff-kin”), who at the time was the chief executive officer of both Bentley and Bugatti. I peppered him with questions about Veyron development, as Dr. Paefgen was brought in to “fix” the Veyron halfway through its evolution from fever dream of Volkswagen Groupübermensch Ferdinand Piëch to its eventual 1,001-PS (987 SAE horsepower) reality. There were nine issues, Paefgen explained to me, holding up production of the Veyron, and the good doctor seemed pleased that I cared enough to want to know each and every one. Around the third course, our conversation turned to the Super Sport, and in between bites of something like a medium-rare A5 wagyu I said, “Dr. Paefgen, isn’t 268 miles per hour getting silly?” I’ll never forget his response.
He nodded, and then in his deep German accent, replied, “Yes, I agree with you. Top speed is for the children. The Veyron, as you know, is about accelerationundbraking.” I replied that I didn’t know, as I’d never driven a Veyron. He looked stunned, then pointed his large finger at me. “You’ve never driven a Veyron?” he asked rhetorically. He then turned a few degrees to my left, pointed that same finger at the PR woman seated beside me and declared, “This man must drive a Veyron.” A few minutes later my phone was exploding, “Would tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. work for you?” It’s good to dine with the king.
That next morning, I drove a Veyron, a topless Grand Sport, for the first time. Since then, I’ve driven more than my fair share of the world’s first hypercar, including a regular Veyron and a couple of Vitesses (the 1,184-hp targa-topped final Veyrons), one of which used to belong to Arnold Schwarzenegger—cigar burn on the leather and everything. The 1,479-hp Chiron succeeded the Veyron in 2016, but until now I’d never driven one. I mentioned that I just drove two, yeah?
Chiron Song
The Chiron Sport is, shocker, a sportier version of the Chiron. To put the idea into more digestible Porsche terms, going from Chiron to Chiron Sport is like going from a 911 Carrera S to a 911 GTS. Nothing too crazy has happened, but the result is a better driving car. Specifically, the Sport is 40 pounds lighter, has better aero, a torque-vectoring differential on the rear axle, and rides on a stiffer suspension. The incredibly attractive full carbon-fiber Turquoise Blue example I drove came loaded with $509,150 inoptions. To be fair, the exposed carbon accounts for $315,000, and things such as the $71,300 wheels and $62,000 French Blue leather and carbon interior make up the rest. To be fairer, the wheels arefantastic. Full price is, again, $3,757,150, more than most mid-century masterpiece homes I spend too much time lusting over on Redfin and Zillow that I also can’t afford. For those wondering, I try to block the price from my brain while driving cars like this. It’s the only way.
What’s 1,500 metric horsepower like? Silly. As Dr. Paefgen said about the Veyron, the Chiron Sport is half about acceleration. Also, forget about the horsepower. Instead, concentrate on the 1,180 lb-ft of thunderous, hammer-time torque that’s available from 2,000 rpm until 6,000 rpm (redline happens at 6,700). Those aren’t even the interesting numbers. We know this particular Sport has cleared the quarter mile in less than 9.5 seconds at nearly 160 mph. Kids, that’s a production street-legal car that you can buy! Well,youcan’t buy one, but there are a couple of dozen humans who can. The initial acceleration isn’t scary. I mean, more than 4,500 pounds moving so quickly would/should frighten the pants off most observers and passengers. Spoiled old me has experienced the same sort of launch in cars such as the Tesla Model S P100D Ludicrous, Porsche 911 Turbo S, and the McLaren 765LT.
From behind the steering wheel, the Chiron Sport is as smooth a ride as exists. Like it’s on a greased roller coaster track. There’s no squatting, no squirming, no chirping—the car just rapidly glides down the road, and then hey, look at that, 140 mph. Time to get on the brakes/flip up that air brake (the hydraulically actuated rear wing doubles as an air brake). The Chiron Sport, then, is an incredibly, almost unbelievably quick luxury car. Back to what Dr. Paefgen told me: The Veyron’s successor is all about accelerationundbraking. Notice he didn’t say anything about turning left or right.
A Purer Chiron Experience
Enter the Chiron Pur Sport. Built for Bugatti owners more interested in “challenging country roads,” the differences between the Sport and the Pur Sport might not sound like much. Weight reduction was a focus, though there’s only so much to be trimmed from a car of which so much is already carbon fiber. First to go was the movable rear wing and its associated hydraulics. In its place is a massive, 75-inch-wide, boomerang-looking fixed wing with the word Bugatti stamped inNew York Timesheadline font. Lamborghini did the same thing when it turned the Aventador into the Aventador SV and saved around the same amount of weight when all was said and done (50 kilograms, or about 110 pounds). Ditching the moving wing accounts for most of the weight loss. Additionally, Bugatti already ditched the moving wing on the Divo, the close to $6 million Chiron derivative that the marque from Molsheim needlessly swears is a separate model (it isn’t). In fact, many of the modifications that take the Chiron from Sport to Pur Sport were first seen on the Divo. One could even think of the Pur Sport as a half-price Divo without the garish body kit. Though, as we’ll see, the Pur Sport is much more than that.
Up front, Bugatti’s iconic horseshoe grille is larger, and the splitter is wider, the effect being that the Pur Sport looks wider than the “regular” car. The rear diffuser is massive and visually serves as a framing point for the huge, 3D-printed, thin-walled titanium exhaust pipes. In an attempt to make the Pur Sport look lower than it is, the bottom third of the body is finished in exposed black carbon fiber. Inside, the leather’s been tossed in favor of lighter, sportier Alcantara. Plus, aluminum and titanium abound. One wonderful thing about all Chiron interiors is that a screen isn’t the central focus of the cabin. Not only is it refreshing, but in 50 years these cars won’t seem dated. Well, aside from that pesky steering wheel (autonomous car joke). Special praise is due to the analog 300-mph speedometer, a parting gift from another former Bugatti CEO and certified watch geek I’ve broken bread with, Wolfgang Dürheimer. The big, central speedo is so cool.
The Chiron Pur Sport’s active hydraulic dampers have been lowered, and the springs are much stiffer—65 percent stiffer up front, 33 percent at the rear. Of particular note is the 2.5 degrees of negative camber now found on each wheel. Pretty extreme for a factory-produced street-legal car. It’s to the point where you can notice the stance standing next to the Pur Sport. Each wheel is 9.0 pounds lighter and features special blades designed to “feed” that massive rear diffuser. Titanium brake pad base panels and new rotors shave another 7.0 pounds. Also worth mentioning are the new Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires that are 285/30R20 up front and a still staggering (and staggered) 355/25R21 in the rear (fun fact: Veyrons did have larger 365-width rears). Speaking of tires, since the Pur Sport’s top speed is down from 261 mph toonly217 mph, it doesn’t require the expensive high-speed Michelins found on regular Chirons (rumored to cost $20,000 a set) or, God forbid, the carbon-fiber-reinforced set for the Chiron Super Sport 300+, whatever they cost (think of a number, now think of a bigger number). Probably best not to know. According to Tirerack.com, a set of four for your Pur Sport runs about $3,600.
All that said, by far the most important change made to the Chiron Pur Sport is to the transmission. It’s still a seven-speed dual-clutch unit that handles more torque than any other on earth, but the gears are 15 percent shorter. Actually, the transmission itself is 80 percent new. My sources tell me that Bugatti spent more than $120,000,000 developing the Pur Sport, a simply unbelievable amount of money for what’s essentially a low-run handling package. Unbelievable, I should say, until you realize what it costs to develop a mostly new transmission. Only 60 Pur Sports will be built, and although each one costs $400K more than a Chiron Sport, that’s only $24 million when they all get sold. Smart money says the Pur Sport’s new transmission will be used by whatever vehicle eventually replaces the Chiron. Know that out of the 500 Chirons planned, approximately 415 have been sold. For a single-model brand like Bugatti, a new car will be needed soon.
My Chiron-a
What does it all mean? I’ve been thinking about it for days, and I’m a little hesitant to write this, but the Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport is the best car I’ve ever driven. Period. Full stop. End of story. It just is. The shortened gearset means that the thing’s acceleration is even more insane than the Chiron Sport’s. Rapid is the wrong word. It’s more ferocious, more all-encompassing, more sacred expletives producing. Again, peak torque is achieved at just 2,000 rpm, so the rabid freight train’s worth of torque is always there, right at your fingertips (I was pulling the paddles to change my own gears, thank you very much). On the suggestion of the Bugatti pro driver affixed to the passenger seat (per the brand’s insurance requirements) and fearful of whatever takedown move the California Highway Patrol would use on me, I stayed off the freeways, aiming instead for the twisted canyon roads Bugatti claims the Chiron Pur Sport is designed to tackle. They ain’t lying.
On one such road, there’s a decent-sized straight. In supercars too powerful for their own good (hello, McLaren 765LT), I’ve hit 135 mph by the end. In the Pur Sport, I saw over 140 mph—at thehalfwaypoint. Halfway. So, yes, the Chiron Pur Sport is essentially quicker than any other car, and even if there are some far-flung examples that do move more quickly in a straight line, said car doesn’t have the all-wheel-drive surefootedness, nor build quality, nor aircraft-carrier-arresting-cable-like brakes of the Pur Sport. I’m sorry to have to break the news to you like that, but it’s true. Up and down the entire mountain, I was seeing speeds that were 30 mph quicker than I’ve ever seen. I’m still processing it all, four days later. And yes, I saw those speeds everywhere, even and maybe especially through corners. The experience was beautiful. I mean that. A hopefully not once-in-a-lifetime thrill. The Pur Sport carved the road up. Remarkable.
Here’s something else: I’ve always loved listening to various iterations of Bugatti’s 8.0-liter masterpiece of an engine. However, what I’ve mostly heard, including on the Chiron Sport, are the sounds of the turbochargers and wastegates. It’s like listening to a steam factory during the holiday rush. Sure, there’s some exhaust, but not too much of it. In the Pur Sport, which features less sound-deadening material and that thin-walled exhaust, you get to actually experience the whirring and gnashing of 16 cylinders and 64 valves. It’s simply awesome and only adds to the already mind-boggling driving experience.
This is what separates the Pur Sport from not just the Chiron Sport, but every other Volkswagen Group Bugatti I’ve driven. Since the Veyron, Bugattis haveonlybeen about accelerationundbraking. Those paying attention will notice I said VW-era Bugattis. I’m lucky enough to have driven both an EB110 GT and an EB110 SS. Those relatively small, hyper-stiff supercars handled beautifully. The Veyrons handled, but the feeling was much like a Bentley, not like a proper sports car. I’m sure part of what makes the Chiron Pur Sport so fantastic to drive are the tires, which Bugatti claims offer 10 percent more lateral grip, but in my mind, it’s the negative camber. Having that much bite, especially on the front end, transforms the car from a missile of a grand tourer into a world-class, truly exceptional driver’s car. The Pur Sport has its claws out, slashing away at the road. There’s nothing like it, and I loved every minute of driving it. To the point where I’m worried I’ll never experience an experience like that again.
Between Two Chirons
Sure, you can have fun on a twisty canyon road in the Chiron Sport, but there’s a loose, aquatic feeling. Too much hydraulic fluid, not enough bite. The steering feels relatively slow. As a comparison, and one that will no doubt make steam come out of current Bugatti CEO Stephan Winkelmann’s ears, the regular car’s a bit like a Dodge Charger Hellcat Redeye around corners. Not exactly precise or elegant, but with the horsepower necessary to be quicker than every other car on the road. Hey man, the Hellcat has real carbon-fiber trim inside. This floaty, boaty, luxo-barge feeling has been true since the Veyron. Yes, it went remarkably fast in a straight line. But then you got out, ate something, and started thinking about Porsches. The Pur Sport? You begin fantasizing about knocking over a bank. The difference is staggering. This is not another seemingly never-ending Chiron appearance package. The Pur Sport is a fundamental redefining of what makes a Bugatti a Bugatti. This serious, sober, driver-focused machine is a new mission statement. I’m trying to come up with a way to explain the severity of what Bugatti has accomplished. Initially, I was going to say going from the Chiron Sport to the Pur Sport is like going from a Porsche 911 Turbo to a 911 GT2 RS, but it’s more severe than that. Porsche 911 Carrera 4S to 911 GT2 RS? I’m fumbling around here. The Chiron as a car—and, as a result, the marque—has been transformed.
After my Pur Sport experience, I called a friend of mine who recently paid four million dollars for one. His thoughts? “It’s worth it.” Not that I’ll ever be in his shoes, but if I were, I’d feel the same. Only nostalgia would lead you to purchase any other sort of car at this price point. Bugatti is no longer just about accelerationundbraking. Driving, actual sweaty palms, hanging off the side of a mountain, blood in your ears, some skill is necessary; canyon-carvingdrivingis now the brand’s focus. As Winkelmann has said of the Pur Sport, “This means we have come full circle, back to the good, old Bugatti tradition.” Welcome home.
| 2021 Bugatti Chiron Sport | 2021 Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport | |
| PRICE | $3,757,150 | $3,959,000 |
| LAYOUT | Mid-engine, AWD, 2-pass, 2-door coupe | |
| ENGINE | 8.0L/1,479-hp/1,180-lb-ft quad-turbo, DOHC 64-valve W-16 | |
| TRANSMISSION | 7-speed twin-clutch auto | |
| CURB WEIGHT | 4,500 (MT est) | 4,400 (MT est) |
| WHEELBASE | 106.7 in | |
| L x W x H | 178.9 x 80.2 x 47.7 in | |
| 0-60 MPH | 2.3 seconds (MT est) | 2.1 seconds (MT est) |
| EPA FUEL ECON, CITY/HWY/COMB | 8/13/10 mpg | |
| ENERGY CONSUMPTION, CITY/HWY | 421/259 kW-hrs/100 miles | |
| CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB | 2.01 lb/mile | |
| ON SALE | Now | |
Bugatti Chiron Super Sport and Its W-16: One Last Dance With Hypercar Royalty
Angus MacKenzie says goodbye to one of the most extraordinary production engines of the modern era: Bugatti’s 8.0-liter W-16.Angus MacKenzieWriter
ManufacturerPhotographerAug 12, 2022
Third gear, 3,600 rpm. Floor the gas pedal.Whoomp!You’re shoved into the seat with colossal force. A stupendous roar like an erupting volcano is at your back. The scenery blurs in your peripheral vision, and your neck muscles strain to hold your head clear of the headrest as the tach needle breezes past 6,000 rpm and storms toward the 7,100-rpm redline. Snick the right-hand paddle to upshift, lift off, and breathe. Check the readout in the center console. It says 6,866 rpm and 1,581 hp.
There will be future Bugattis that will have more power, that will shave whole tenths of a second off the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport’s acceleration times. But they will never be like the Chiron Super Sport.
They’ll be cars propelled by streaming electrons and spinning armatures, cars propelled by the smooth and silent symphony of the subatomic world. They won’t be dancing on the edge of destruction a thousand times a second, turning the explosive power of gasoline and air violently compressed and set on fire into a harmonious fusion of power and torque and forward motion.
They won’t have the Chiron Super Sport’s huge lungs and thumping heart. They won’t have the Chiron Super Sport’s soul.
They won’t have the Chiron Super Sport’s extraordinary 8.0-liter W-16 engine.
I’ve driven versions of all three modern Bugattis, from the EB110 to the Veyron to the Chiron, and emerged from each astonished and amazed. But when I got out of the Chiron Super Sport for the last time, there was a tinge of something else. Sadness, I think.
Bugatti will soon announce one more variant to be built on the Chiron architecture, a car specifically designed to celebrate the mighty W-16 one last time. As it should. For we shall never see this engine’s like again.
Until now, I’ve tended to regard the Bugatti Chiron, like the Veyron, as a somewhat one-dimensional machine, all shock-and-awe acceleration on the way to the fastest top speed of any production car in history. But driving the Super Sport made me realize that in the context of the coming age of the lightswitch-quick, all-electric hypercar, it’s not just what the Chiron does that makes it special. It’s how it does it.
I’ve driven one of Mercedes-Benz’s replicas of the 1886 Benz Patentwagen, long regarded as the first practicable motor vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine; 1.0 liter of displacement, one cylinder, 0.75 horsepower. The Chiron Super Sport’s titanic engine has eight times the capacity, 16 times the cylinders, and … more than 2,100 times the power.
Those are numbers the Patentwagen’s creator, Karl Benz, could never have imagined. What’s more, the W-16 engine meets worldwide production vehicle noise and emissions standards. It is a benchmark internal combustion engine.
There are internal combustion engines with higher specific outputs and better efficiency. There are much lighter, more compact high-performance engines, too. But there’s a gilded-age excess to the 1,080-pound W-16 that makes it stand out, a leviathan majesty to its execution that railway magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt would have understood.
Features editor Scott Evans drove a Chiron Super Sport in California earlier this year. My afternoon with the car on the quiet country roads around Molsheim affirmed his conclusion: The Super Sport is the best all-rounder of the Chirons.
It might have 1,578 hp, pump out 1,106 lb-ft of torque, hit 60 mph in just 2.5 seconds, and have a top speed of 273 mph, but the Super Sport is a car that, if you had the wealth of a gilded-age Vanderbilt—or a 21st century tech titan—you could choose to drive every day. It’s smooth and well mannered around town, effortlessly relaxed and easy to drive.
And on winding roads, it’s dynamically more agile and responsive than a car of its size and mass has any right to be thanks to suspension and steering tweaks shared with the speed-optimized Super Sport 300+ and the more track-focused Pur Sport.
In case you wondered, the average Chiron or Veyron owner drives their car about 1,200 to 1,300 miles a year, says Bugatti test driver Pierre-Henri Raphanel. The highest-mileage Veyrons now have more than 30,000 miles on the clock, and the Chiron test mule and customer demonstration car has now covered more than 80,000 miles.
Although those relatively low distances have more to do with the owners’ time choices than any concern about running costs, the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s on the Chiron Super Sport represent a dramatic improvement over the tires used on the Veyron in terms of their cost. And, more remarkably, a dramatic improvement in performance, too.
Each Veyron tire took Michelin technicians an hour to hand build. A set of four cost $42,000, and they lasted maybe 6,000 miles. At 253 mph, they’d survive a maximum of 15 minutes before the heat and enormous forces would simply tear them apart.
Fortunately, the Veyron would run out of gas in less than 10 minutes at that speed.
To guarantee the integrity of the bead seal, Michelin would only allow two tires to be fitted to an individual Veyron wheel before the wheel had to be scrapped. A set of replacement wheels cost a cool $69,000, which made fitting that third set of tires a $111,000 proposition.
The Cup 2s on the Super Sport—285/30-ZR20s at the front and 355/25-ZR21s at the rear—have been specially developed for the car. Coded BG2 (the regular Chiron Cup 2s are coded BG), they have stronger metal strands wrapped around the carcass before the final layer of rubber is laid on.
As such, they’re rated for an incredible 310 mph, says Bugatti’s other test driver, Andy Wallace, who set the 2019 production speed record of 304 mph in the Chiron Super Sport 300+ using the tires. “At that speed there was about 15,500 pounds of force trying to tear each tire apart,” Wallace, who was accompanying me on my drive, noted dryly.
Wallace says Michelin supplied 11 sets of tires for the record attempt, but he only used three sets. “We only changed tires during testing when we went above 290 mph.” All of which makes the $15,000 Michelin charges for a set of Chiron Super Sport tires sound like a bargain.
Bugattis have always been cars imbued with the vision of a singular individual.
Founder Ettore Bugatti saw engineering as art. Born into an artistic family in Milan, Bugatti was as obsessed with the form and finish of his cars’ mechanicals as their function. “Nothing is too beautiful, nothing is too expensive,” said the man who once snorted that W.O. Bentley simply built fast trucks.
The Bugatti EB110, just 139 of which were made between 1991 and 1995, was the brainchild of Italian businessman Romano Artioli. He built a factory just outside Modena, got Marcello Gandini, the man who designed the Miura and the Countach for Lamborghini, to sketch a concept, and hired a team of engineers to build a car to outperform the Ferrari F40.
The Chiron and Veyron were the result of then VW Group boss Ferdinand Piëch’s steely determination to build the fastest, most powerful supercar in history.
Piëch simply informed the engineering group he selected to develop the Veyron that it would have 1,001 hp, that it would do 253 mph, and that it would look just like the concept he unveiled at the 2000 Geneva Show. Oh, and that it had to be civilized enough to allow him to drive Mrs. Piëch to the opera in it.
From the whispering 12.7-liter straight-eight that powered Ettore’s majestic Type 41 Royale, to the jewel-like quad-turbo 3.5-liter V-12 of Artioli’s EB110, to the herculean W-16 of Piëch’s Veyron and Chiron, extraordinary engines have been a key part of executing their vision of Bugatti.
Bugatti is now part-owned by Croatian ultra-high-performance EV specialist Rimac. Founder Mate Rimac’s quad-motor Nevera, which boasts 1,941 hp and 1,741 lb-ft of torque and will hit 60 mph in 1.9 seconds on the way to a top speed of 258 mph, shows he knows how to build an EV that measures up to the hypercar hype.
There’s no question Mate Rimac can create an electric-powered Bugatti that will make the right numbers. But could he create an electric-powered Bugatti that has soul?
That, I suspect, might be a much tougher task. Which perhaps explains why the first Bugatti to be built on Mate Rimac’s watch, the first new-from-the-tires-up model from the marque since the Veyron launched in 2005, won’t be all-electric. It will be a plug-in hybrid.
An extraordinary one, hopefully.
| 2022 Bugatti Chiron Super Sport Specifications | |
| PRICE | $3,825,000 |
| LAYOUT | Mid-engine, AWD, 2-pass, 2-door coupe |
| ENGINE | 8.0L/1,578-hp/1,180-lb-ft quad-turbo DOHC 64-valve W-16 |
| TRANSMISSION | 7-speed dual-clutch auto |
| CURB WEIGHT | 4400 lb (MT est) |
| WHEELBASE | 106.7 in |
| L x W x H | 188.7 x 80.2 x 47.7in |
| 0-60 MPH | 2.4 sec (mfr est) |
| EPA FUEL ECON, CITY/HWY/COMB | 8/11/9 mpg |
| EPA RANGE, COMB | 238 miles |
| ON SALE | Now |
