What has ten radiators, costs about the same as Iceland – probably more – and doesn’t come with as standard with a ‘supported by Greenpeace’ sticker? Meet the all new Bugati Chiron, pronounced kaey-ron. The Chiron has been polluting the curiosity of the petrol-sniffing web-crawling community for some time now and true-to-type, many baseless speculations were made. Of which some may have been true, but then again, who cares. Heres’s all the dope from the horse’s mouth ahead of its launch at the Geneva Motorshow.
The Chiron will continue its predecessor’s tradition of being a symbol of opulence, the fastest, most exclusive, possibly the most luxurious hyper sport in existence. Continuing with tradition the Chiron, which looks like something out of a loosely written sci-fi TV show from the 70s, will be the first ever production car to embrace the black top with about 1500bhp. And obviously that’s now it, the Veyron also comes with a 1600Nm peak torque output, that may come in handy whilst towing a small moon. The torque kicks in as low as 2000rpm and the rides a long wave of intestine crushing twist right up to 6000rpm. At which point we believe that your eyes might literally pop straight out of your socket. Relax. We’re kidding.
Or are we?
Bugatti have been rather soft when it comes to top speed, as a result of which the electronically limited Chiron will top out at a rather meagre 420kmph. Which according to Bugatti has been set to make it limited for road use. Apparently no one in Bugatti has ever seen a public road. Or has never lived to tell the tale after meeting one. Given by their statements, either could be true. Bugatti also say that the Chiron could easily break the 500kmph barrier, but we’re limited by today’s tyre technology. To think we’ve come so far, and we’ve not been able to break the 500kmph mark on a road car. For shame!
Now the Chiron, will continue with a fettled version of the existing eight litre W16 monstrosity from the Veyron, only with 492bhp more than the now mild looking Veyron. That about 4bhp more than the 488GTB. And that’s just the difference. Let that sink in.
The Chiron will be built on a carbon-fibre monocoque, but will continue to weigh almost as much as a small moon at just 5 kilos shy of 2 tons. That’s about the same as most SUVs. That’s about where physics starts to crack, the 2-ton monster will shoot to a 100kmph in less than 2.5 seconds and then continue to 300kmph in 13.6 seconds, while hitting the 200kmph mark on the way in 6.5 seconds. Road use, they say.
Oh, and how much moolah is this mind bending performance going to cost you? Well, the the Chiron is priced at an outrageous 2.4 million euros. Thats a little more than 18 crore Indian rupees, and this is before taxes and duties. And of the 500 going to be made, Bugatti have already sold a third of them.