2018 BUGATTI CHIRON FIRST DRIVE

MotorTrend

Motor Trend's Angus Mackenzie gets behind the wheel of the Bugatti Chiron for the first time! What does 1500hp @ 6700 rpm look like? Click play to find out!

Transcript

00:00 (dramatic music)

00:02 (dramatic music)

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00:11 - When Volkswagen Group boss Ferdinand Piaf

00:37 was briefing the engineers working on the Bugatti Veyron,

00:40 his criteria were simple.

00:42 The car had to have 1,000 horsepower.

00:44 It had to accelerate to 60 miles an hour in three seconds,

00:48 and it had to have a top speed of 250 miles an hour.

00:52 Oh, and it had to be docile enough

00:55 for him to be able to drive Mrs. Piaf

00:56 to the opera in the evening.

00:58 Now his brief for the Bugatti Chiron was even simpler.

01:03 The Chiron merely had to be better

01:04 than the Veyron in every respect.

01:07 No pressure then.

01:08 For the best part of a decade,

01:09 the Veyron has been the world's preeminent hypercar.

01:13 The Veyron Super Sport boasts 1,200 horsepower

01:17 and a top speed of 268 miles an hour.

01:20 So let's cut to the chase.

01:23 The Bugatti Chiron has 1,500 horsepower,

01:26 1,180 pound-feet of torque.

01:29 It will accelerate to 60 miles an hour

01:31 in less than 2.5 seconds.

01:34 And top speed?

01:35 It's electronically limited to 261 miles an hour.

01:39 That's right, I said electronically limited.

01:42 The Bugatti folks say the Chiron will go faster.

01:46 They won't say how much faster.

01:48 All they will say is that the Veyron Super Sport's record

01:51 is looking shaky.

01:52 (upbeat music)

01:55 (engine revving)

01:58 (upbeat music)

02:27 So the interior in the Chiron is quite simple.

02:30 It's a giant analog speedometer in front of you.

02:35 Goes to 500 kilometers an hour in these metric cars,

02:38 US-spec cars.

02:40 It'll go to 300 miles an hour, which is pretty impressive.

02:43 And Wolfgang Doerheimer did that because in 50 years' time,

02:47 he wants a young kid to look inside of a cockpit

02:50 of a Chiron and say, "Wow, this car could do

02:52 "300 miles an hour."

02:54 The other cool thing, there's lots of information

02:55 and graphics up on the screens here,

02:57 but these buttons down here,

02:59 these are the buttons that control all your HVAC system.

03:03 Press and hold this button down the bottom

03:06 and a whole bunch of other information comes up.

03:08 For example, this tells me that my peak revs

03:11 on my highest gear shift was 6,556 RPM.

03:16 Now this car makes its peak power and torque at 6,600 RPM.

03:21 So I was right on the money there.

03:24 It also tells you something you probably wouldn't want

03:26 to show to the highway patrol officer.

03:28 In this case, our maximum speed, 328 kilometers an hour.

03:33 Now in American money, that's a little bit

03:36 over 200 miles an hour.

03:39 And more interestingly, how much horsepower did I use

03:42 to get that speed?

03:43 Well, the car tells me 1,457 PS, that's metric horsepower.

03:48 That's nearly all the power this car has.

03:52 So this steering wheel is milled from a solid piece

03:55 of aluminum and all the leather pieces are fitted around it.

04:00 It's a work of art and you've got the Bugatti horseshoe

04:04 shape here on the airbag cover.

04:07 Two buttons down the side here,

04:08 one of course that starts the engine.

04:10 Over the other side, we got a button that changes

04:12 the dynamic characteristics of the Chiron.

04:15 We have transportation mode, which lifts the suspension up

04:18 so that you can get the car in and out of steep driveways

04:21 without scraping the front spoiler.

04:24 There's EB mode and this is your standard mode.

04:26 This is the mode that gives you the ride comfort

04:29 and body control that Bugatti engineers think is right

04:32 for everyday driving.

04:34 At about 120 miles an hour, the car automatically defaults

04:38 to Autobahn mode.

04:39 So it gets lower to the road surface,

04:42 the angle of attack changes to the atmosphere

04:45 that helps give more aerodynamic stability at speed.

04:49 You can select that mode by twisting this knob

04:51 one step around to the Autobahn sign.

04:54 The final graphic on there is a chequered flag

04:57 and that's for handling mode.

05:00 That really tightens up the damping,

05:02 the car doesn't move quite so much in the vertical.

05:06 The damper's really controlling those upward motions

05:09 a lot more.

05:10 The angle of attack is more aggressive,

05:12 the car rides lower to the road,

05:14 and the wing at the back is at a more aggressive angle,

05:17 again to help with high-speed aerodynamics.

05:20 It also switches off some of the stability control,

05:22 not all of it, but enough that you can actually

05:25 drift this car.

05:26 Now, we haven't had the room to do that here in Portugal,

05:29 but that's one thing I really wanna do.

05:31 (car engine roaring)

05:34 (upbeat music)

05:38 (car engine roaring)

05:41 Someone once asked British mountaineer George Mallory,

05:55 who died on Mount Everest in the 1920s,

05:58 why he would risk his life climbing

06:00 the world's highest mountain.

06:02 His answer was simple, because it's there.

06:05 Now, some might ask why Bugatti bothers to build

06:07 the world's fastest, most expensive,

06:10 most powerful hypercar.

06:12 And the answer's simple, because they can.

06:14 (dramatic music)

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