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Bugatti Chiron: Does It Live Up To The Hype Of Being The Fastest, Best Production Car Ever?

By Jinger Jarrett
Published on: 04:12 PST, Jul 24, 2016

The Bugatti Chiron, the latest effort from Bugatti, is a massive feat of engineering. Its goal is to be the fastest, best production car on the road. The question is, does it live up to the hype?

CNET’s Road Show reported that the Bugatti Chiron is a complete package in a gorgeous shell. It is the world’s latest hypercar, packing 1,500 horsepower under the hood. Its top speed is 261 MPH, and it goes from 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds. Bugatti is expected to up the speed on the Chiron and raise it to around 280 MPH.

Instead of creating a hybrid, Bugatti chose to go with a traditional set-up instead, because customers were concerned about how long the drivetrain would last on a hybrid, and customers didn’t want a hybrid. The engines also take seven days to build, and once the car is built, it is tested on a rolling road to handle the Chiron’s power.

Autoweek asked whether or not the Bugatti Chiron would be able to break 288-miles-per-hour. The Chiron is the successor to the Bugatti Veyron, and both are made through a French-German collaboration. Bugatti boss Wolfgang Durheimer said that the company would try to get the Chiron to break the speed record of the Veyron.

“We will try to lock in a new world speed record. I know the Chiron will be faster (than the Veyron Super Sport), but we don’t how fast. We have the calculations from our simulations, but it is always different to sit in the car and actually do it.”

There are few places in the world where a car is allowed to speed at 250 miles per hour, and the number of places hasn’t changed. To see if the Bugatti Chiron will break the record of the Veyron, it will be necessary to test it at the 13-mile Ehra-Lessien test facility, where the Veyron set the current record for speed.

ABP Live reported that the Bugatti Chiron will attempt to become the fastest production car on the planet. The Chiron is the successor to the Veyron, which was the previous record holder. The attempt by the Chiron to break the Veyron speed record will occur sometime in 2018.

Bugatti launched its first car and took the automobile industry by storm in 2005 with the launch of the Veyron. It had a mid mounted, 8.0-liter quad-turbocharged W16 engine that propelled it to a speed of 407 miles per hour. That made it the fastest production car when it beat the record of the McLaren F1, which set the record in 1998 at a speed of 390.7 miles per hour.

The International Business Times UK reported that the Bugatti Chiron would actually try to reach a speed of 300 miles per hour, and it has a speedometer that reads up to 310 miles per hour. The Veyron Super Sport reached a speed of 268 miles per hour in 2010. Those within the motoring press believe that the Chiron will easily reach the 288 miles per hour the way it comes delivered from the manufacturer and without the limiter.

The engine currently delivers 1,479 horsepower compared to the 879 horsepower for the Veyron and the 1,183 horsepower for the Veyron Super Sport. Both the Chiron and the Veyron share the same configuration, but the engine for the Chiron is 95 percent new. All that speed won’t come cheap, though, as the current price tag for a Bugatti Chiron runs about $2.6 million.

[Photo by Harold Cunningham/Getty Images]

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