- Bugatti was out of the top speed record race, but now it appears to be back
- The company took a Chiron Super Sport 300+ to a top speed of 304.7 mph in 2019
- The company’s new Tourbillon hypercar has almost 200 hp more than the Chiron Super Sport 300+
Bugatti shocked the automotive world two decades ago when it launched the Veyron with a four-digit horsepower rating and then broke the old land speed record for production cars by taking the hypercar to a top speed of 253 mph.
With its successor, the Chiron, Bugatti chose to downplay the car’s top speed abilities. Former Bugatti boss Stephan Winkelmann, now head of Lamborghini, even came out in 2019 and said Bugatti would pursue performance targets beyond the maximum speed.
He said that after Bugatti sent a version of the Chiron to a top speed 304.7 mphbecoming the first company with a production car to surpass the 300 mph mark.
Bugatti is now under new management, and the new boss is fully committed to pushing the limits of top speed. When asked by The unit During August’s Monterey Car Week, on whether Bugatti was done with speed, Mate Rimac, head of the Bugatti Rimac business that oversees hypercar development for the Bugatti and Rimac brands, responded: “It was. It’s not.”
Mate Rimac
Bugatti Chief Technology Officer Emilio Scervo provided further details, explaining that Bugatti will continue to strive for new top speeds, but not at the expense of the comfort and excitement that Bugatti customers demand.
“So we’re still going to try to move that bar higher, but keep it in a way that’s very Bugatti, very comfortable,” Scervo told The Drive. “It’s not like a scary high-speed drive, but it’s getting more emotional and more sophisticated in the way it delivers it.”
Under Rimac’s guidance, Bugatti delivered a successor to the Chiron in the form of the whirlwind. The car, which is expected to go into production in 2026, was revealed in June with a plug-in hybrid powertrain combining a naturally aspirated 8.3-liter V-16 engine with a trio of electric motors for a combined power of 1,775 hp.
Bugatti Tourbillon
The car’s top speed is limited to 276 mph, but a True Vmax above 300 mph It wouldn’t be surprising, considering the Chiron in 1,577-hp Chiron Super Sport 300+ form has already reached 304.773 mph. That’s not considered the world land speed record for a production car, at least by Guinness. To enter the record books, an average of two speeds is used with the car running in opposite directions over the space of an hour, to eliminate the effects of the road surface gradient and any tailwind.
As the Chiron 300+ only made one run of 304.7 mph, the SSC Tuatara is considered the record holder with its speed of 282.9 mph achieved in 2021.
While SSC seems to be out of the running for a new record, Bugatti faces another big threat, which is Koenigsegg with is Jesko Absolut. The Swedish brand has previously said that its hypercar could potentially exceed 480 km/h.
