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!
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00:00 (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)
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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)
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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)