Bugatti’s latest multimillion hypercar trades top speed for fun

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  Bugatti had planned to debut its new Chiron Pur Sport at this year's Geneva auto show, but COVID-19 scuttled that idea. Earlier in July, the car did finally make it to the Swiss city for a photo shoot, however. [credit: Bugatti ]

When Ferdinand Piech resurrected Bugatti in 1998, he gave the company an engineering brief: build a car with at least 986hp (735kW), capable of 249mph (400km/h). Oh, and it had to be as drivable as a Volkswagen Golf. That car became the Veyron EB 16.4, and when it went into production in 2005, it met that challenge, boasting 1,001 metric horsepower (987hp/736kW) and a top speed of 253mph (408km/h), all for a cool million Euros (or about $1.3 million at the time).

But that was just the starting point. In 2016, the brand followed up the Veyron with the Chiron, another mid-engined two-seater, powered by another quad-turbo 8.0L W16 engine. The price of admission had gone up, but so had the power and top speed, a trend that has continued with derivatives like the Chiron Super Sport that reached an almost unbelievable 305mph (490km/h) in testing last year.

Slower, but quicker?

Topping that number seems difficult, which may be why the latest iteration of the Chiron—called the Chiron Pur Sport—is actually the slowest Bugatti since the EB110 of the mid-90s. Slowest as in top speed, at least, as the Pur Sport is electronically limited to a mere 218mph (350km/h). The Pur Sport might not be the fastest Bugatti, but it may well be the quickest.

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