Bugatti Chiron Editors' Rating

Leaving the 99.99 percent in its dust, the Chiron is a 1500-hp smackdown of every hypercar ever produced. An 8.0-liter 16-cylinder engine uses four turbochargers to make 1500 hp and 1180 lb-ft of torque, but calling its acceleration “heroic” would be an understatement—Bugatti claims a top speed of 261 mph. A seven-speed dual-clutch automatic routes power to all four wheels, but it can do more than straight-line speed. The $2,998,000 price tag is a bourgeoisie bargain—hey, it’s under $3 million.If there’s any doubt about the Bugatti Chiron’s raison d’être, it’s written right on the steering wheel, on a large blue button emblazoned with one word: ENGINE. Sure, we could wax poetic about the marriage of modern technology to the ancient human craving to express vanity and wealth. Or about how the 1500-hp Chiron is metaphorically the 700-room Château de Versailles with tailpipes, how the $3 million price means it is no crazier than hiring an artist to spend four years painting God and Adam and angels and saints on your chapel ceiling. In other words, we could go on and on about how it is an exuberant, untethered overstatement in the service of generating delirious stupefaction, both in the nobles who luxuriate in it and the peasants who revel in its reflected glory. https://www.caranddriver.com/photo-gallery/2017-bugatti-chiron-first-drive-review. To be brutally cynical—for that’s the last refuge of plebeians who cannot now and never will be able to afford a Chiron—this car is a do over. It’s a reboot of a last-decade idea for reviving a slumbering auto boutique with a moonshot engineering project intended to create shock and awe. The 1001-hp Veyron 16.4 was the busted sound barrier, the Everest summit, the four-minute mile. It was the car that went 1 mph faster than a Peugeot P88—the fastest race car on the Mulsanne straight—just because. The benchmarks have all been bested, the hyperbole all belabored. It seems pointless to raise the bar again with another mid-engined two-seat coupe, like enrolling Superman in a CrossFit class in the hopes of widening the gap over those speeding bullets.

Viewed more charitably, the concept was perhaps not fully tapped. The Veyron may have improved greatly during its 10-year, 450-car slow drip of a production run, but its handling never rose above that of a blindingly fast Lexus. Unlike a Lexus, it was loud inside, and not a good kind of loud but a loud borne of thrumming tires and ticking injectors and whirring accessories and those great sucking bazookas behind your head. And its slightly corpulent styling was perhaps a shade too Moulin Rouge for some and not enough Yves Montand with a cocked cigarette and a piercing squint. It was an awesome thing, the Veyron, but not above a sequel. Shock and awe is highly perishable, and engineers always need new challenges.

Over some squid nibbles and other Portuguese delicacies at a Lisbon bistro near the Tagus River, I am assured that the Chiron was indeed a worthy challenge. At first, explains chassis-development head Jachin Schwalbe, the thinking was just to restyle the Veyron and crank up the boost. But everybody soon realized that going from 1200 horsepower in the hottest Veyrons—the Super Sport and the Grand Sport Vitesse—to a still drivable 1500 in the Chiron required more than just a bigger blow. Eventually, nearly every single part number changed in the engine. And in the seven-speed transmission. And in the two clutches. And the wheels, tires, brakes, and self-adjusting suspension. And the body, aerodynamic devices, and interior. Even the hand-painted, solid-silver Bugatti grille badge got a facelift. https://www.caranddriver.com/photo-gallery/2017-bugatti-chiron-first-drive-review