Bugatti Chiron

           2017 Bugatti Chiron

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.                               All Ate Up with
Motor                                                                                                                            But the new 261-mph Bug is really just about being all ate up with motor. It’s about old-fashioned combustion in 16 furnaces amidships that are blown into a furious conflagration by quad turbo fans. Push that ENGINE button and the 8.0-liter W-16 lights, not with the ear-bending bark of an Italian supercar—Bugatti figures it is above those kinds of bad-boy theatrics—but with the manly burble of a lazy 650-rpm idle. To paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, “Speak softly and carry a suitcase nuke.”

    

 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.

 Let’s Open ’Er Up

The next morning I’m paired up with Le Mans winner and sports-prototype veteran Andy Wallace for a blast through the rolling inland districts of rural Portugal. I once set a personal record of 204 mph in a Veyron Super Sport in Spain, but I’m warned that Portugal is cracking down, with speed cameras and biker fuzz who are happy to follow you to the nearest ATM for on-the-spot collection. Still, Wallace and I will see an indicated 197 mph before the sun has set and, luckily, not one cop.

In the European way, Bugatti quotes an acceleration figure in the zero-to-62-mph metric, stating that it’s “less than 2.5 seconds,” which is good because the first Veyron we tested hit 60 mph in 2.5. But as Schwalbe and his colleagues are quick to point out, at these torque levels, it’s almost entirely dependent on traction. And this is not the same world in which the Veyron debuted. Today, common Porsche 911 Turbos handily pull a 2.6, and Tesla P100Ds in Ludicrous mode are quicker still.

So the Chiron’s horizon-sucking acceleration, while still evoking a sport bike with four wheels, is not quite as dumbfounding as the Veyron’s was in its day. At least, not from zero to 60. From 60 to, oh, say 180 mph, which takes about 10 seconds, the car actually seems to accelerate even harder, pretty much flattening your lungs and causing both the pleasure and fear centers of your brain to go code red simultaneously.

You can experience this electrifying sensation repeatedly using launch control, activated by pressing a large button just below the airbag on the steering wheel, then applying firm, simultaneous pressure on the brake pedal and the accelerator. Act quickly, though, as you have just three seconds to release the brake or the LC will shut off. The torque on all four wheels is so immense that even on dry pavement the car will wiggle a bit as it claws for traction. After 50 feet or so it hooks up completely, and the scenery will flatten and blur.The Chiron is improved in so many other ways as well. The throttle, able to summon a bonkers 1180 lb-ft of torque, answers with the slimmest delay in lag, meaning on country lanes you’ll often bawl-whoosh past dawdlers so quickly that you’ll be several dozen car lengths ahead before it occurs to you to pull back into your lane. If roads were striped with the Chiron in mind, the Tail of the Dragon would be one big passing zone.