Bugatti’s long-awaited successor to the Veyron has arrived, and the all-new Chiron not only looks outrageous it has performance figures that would embarrass F1 cars. Officially launched on the eve of the 2016 Geneva Motor Show, it’s been dubbed the ‘world’s most powerful, fastest, most luxurious and most exclusive production super sports car’ to be built.
Based on the numbers, it will gazump everything else out there in a game of Top Trumps, with a 261mph top speed, 1,500bhp power output and a £1.9million asking price.
That 1,500bhp is no mean feat for any car – Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes F1 car has a reported 900bhp – and is the only road-legal motor to have such an astonishing output.
It’s produced by an 8.0-litre, W16-cylinder, quad-turbo engine featuring two-stage inter-cooling.
Put into plain English, it’s enough grunt to fire this Nasa-looking road shuttle from a standstill to 62mph in 2.5 seconds.
For this to happen you do need a special key, though, called the Top Speed Key – without it the Chiron will tap out at a top speed of 236mph. That’s more than three times the national speed limit on a UK motorway, so barely pedestrian.
Even more frightening is that Bugatti calls the 261mph top speed as for ‘road use’ and believes it will go even quicker if the full power was unleashed. The highest speed listed on the Chiron’s clocks is 500kph, equating to an eye-popping 310mph.
Planting all those horses into the tarmac requires some serious engineering knowhow as well as a permanent all-wheel drive system and bespoke tyres that were specially developed at an aerospace facility to endure the torment of all that power.
As well as being mind-meltingly fast, it will also be supremely exclusive, with just 500 being made in total at a rate of 50 to 65 models per year, Bugatti said.
And to match the other outrageous spec sheet figures, the price is no small digit either – Bugatti wants €2.4m for each one.
Wolfgang Dürheimer, Bugatti’s president, said: “It is part of human nature to cross boundaries and set new records – to run 100 m faster than ever before, to fly even further into space and to enter new realms.
‘This striving is also our driving force at Bugatti.
‘The Chiron is the result of our efforts to make the best even better.
‘Bugatti has tested the limits of physics.
‘There is no area where we have not achieved significant improvements.’
H.R. Owen is the only officially approved Bugatti dealer in the UK and is the only dealer officially approved to sell and service the Chiron and the Veyron
The dealer’s brand director, Anita Krizsan, has sold more Veyrons than anyone else in Europe and is one of a small number of people in the world to have experienced the full performance capability of the Veyron, doing so at the official Bugatti test facility in Italy.
She said: ‘With only 500 due to be produced, the Bugatti Chiron is set to be a rare sight anywhere in the world. It is a real privilege, therefore, that H.R. Owen will be the only place in the UK that you will be able to buy the world’s fastest, most powerful and most luxurious car.
‘We can’t wait to see the car arrive at our showroom in Berkeley Square in Mayfair when it is launched later this year.’
Bugatti, said it plans to test the full potential of the Chiron’s brute power by putting it up for a world speed record test – it could end the debate about the fastest car built, which is currently held by the Hennessey Venom GT with a 270.49mph top speed.
