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 a tailpipe, how the $3 million price means it is no crazier than hiring an artist to spend four years painting God and Adam and all the 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 Porsche 917 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.

The relatively few people who have driven a Veyron will notice at once that the Chiron is quieter inside and that it has a gentler ride. The strange Michelin PAX tires that cost five figures to replace, with new wheels required at the third tire change, are gone, superseded (at customer pleading—even the obscenely rich have their limits) by more conventional Bugatti-spec Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s, size 285/30R-20 in front and 355/25R-21 in back. There is less road roar from these massive drums and less unpleasant noise from the engine. You hear the husky swell from the enormous titanium exhaust, unaided by artificial augmentation, plus the rapid cymbal riff of the turbos snuffling air at a rate measured in blimps per second.

In the European way, Bugatti quotes an acceleration figure in the zero-to-62-mph metric, stating that it’s “

VEHICLE TYPE: mid-engine, all-wheel-drive, 2-passenger, 2-door coupe

ESTIMATED BASE PRICE: $3,000,000

ENGINE TYPE: quad-turbocharged and intercooled DOHC 64-valve W-16, aluminum block and heads, port fuel injection

Displacement: 488 cu in, 7993 cc
Power: 1500 hp @ 6700 rpm
Torque: 1180 lb-ft @ 2000 rpm

TRANSMISSION: 7-speed dual-clutch automatic with manual shifting mode

DIMENSIONS:
Wheelbase: 106.7 in
Length: 178.9 in
Width: 80.2 in Height: 47.7 in
Passenger volume: 54 cu ft
Cargo volume: 2 cu ft
Curb weight: 4400 lb

PERFORMANCE (C/D EST):
Zero to 60 mph: 2.3 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 4.8 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 9.4 sec
Top speed: 261 mph

FUEL ECONOMY (C/D EST):
EPA combined/city/highway driving: 10/8/15 mpg