Confirmed: Driving a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport Is the Ultimate Behind-the-wheel Experience
Swathed in carbon fiber, titanium, and finest quilted leather, I fiddle with the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport’s steering wheel and dash dials as test driver Andy Wallace fills out legal paperwork by the rear wheel—in the off chance I get nabbed by French authorities breaking the speed limit while enjoying my lifetime dream of driving a Bugatti.
Two days earlier I'd already experienced the Bugatti Baby II, an electric miniature of the 1924 Type 35 built by The Little Car Company. But if the build quality of that micro-EV impressed at the time, the real deal today blows my mind—even before Wallace climbs into the passenger seat at Bugatti’s headquarters in Molsheim, France, and gives me a thumbs up. Green light means go.
The Chiron Super Sport boasts a variant of Bugatti’s quad-turbocharged 8.0-liter W16 tuned for top-end output, with up to 1,577 horsepower and 1,180 lb-ft of torque on tap. A 0-60 time would be too passé, so how about a 0-100 time of 4.2 seconds. Top speed? Just a cool 273 miles per hour.
I climb into the Chiron SS fully expecting the kind of ungodly acceleration largely reserved only for high-performance EVs these days. Questions of driving dynamics and build quality are flooding my mind, which happens when you meet your hero.
At full throttle, the Chiron answers in every imaginable aspect of sensory input. Wallace walks me through the procedure to engage launch control. It's easy enough—just push all the way down on the brake pedal, then again harder, floor the accelerator, and side step the brake. But first a little advice: brace your head back against the headrest to avoid whiplash.
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By the time I feel comfortable enough to glance down at the speedo, I spot 240 kph. Surely my eyes deceive me. The snarling, burbling W16 relents only at shifts and throttle liftoff, offering brutal surges of power, raw turbo noises, and the air brake whooshing up to and past the limits of sanity.
Even proprioception fails me, as my torso compresses into the quilted leather stretched across carbon-fiber bucket seats. And handling on the limit belies the beast’s 4,400-pound curb weight. I hit a corner hard—bold but necessary—and only feel traction control intercede on my behalf for a split second.
Probably for the best, Wallace reminds me, given this car’s entirely incomprehensible $3.825 million starting price tag. That’s come a long way since the Veyron first debuted in 2005, priced at a neat €1 million. The Veyron’s now-ubiquitous all-wheel-drive system probably saves us as I ask for more coming out of the turn.
I probably expected more along the lines of other modern supercars from Maserati or McLaren, or maybe Lamborghini. After all, Volkswagen AG owns both Lambo and Bugatti. The Maserati similarly delivers more turbo noises than exhaust rumble, as a reminder of the forced induction happening directly behind the cockpit. McLarens edge toward a more Lotus-y level of fragility, but with more power available higher up in the rev range. And the Lambos all deliver more displacement, more cylinders, and more throttle response without any turbo or superchargers to delay hard mashes of the accelerator.
But all fall short of the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport. This is a hypercar, not a supercar. And the difference is clear not necessarily at full throttle either. It's just a whole new level of poise, potential energy, and panache. Gorgeous flowing lines. Carbon-fiber weave matched impeccably across panel gaps. The list goes on. I notice smaller details despite the overwhelming nature of this brief driving experience. Burled knobs, vertical climate vents, a double-hooded gauge cluster…
Technology and Luxury at the Edge of Performance
Wallace also points out some of the insane engineering details dictated by the speeds a Chiron Super Sport can reach. A tire valve stem weighs over eight kilos due to rotational acceleration, and a tire pressure monitor more than 50kg. Humps in the carbon door jambs help to prevent a door from flying off if a millimeter’s worth of flex allows air to catch underneath. Michelin and Bugatti needed to work together to prevent the tires from simply de-beading—so much so that these specific rims can support three hypothetical Chirons suspended from each in midair.
More importantly, the doors shut soundly and the steering is as easy at speed as in the narrow streets of pastoral French towns. A suspension lift system, equally necessary for top-speed aero considerations, also makes speed bumps less concerning, while the absurd 255- and 355-millimeter wide tires only begin to hum at speeds above 100 miles per hour.
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So much power, so much performance, comfort beyond comprehension—by the time my hour-plus behind the wheel comes to an end, I only want more. More of the refined poise and effortless acceleration, more fun at the edge of sanity and safety. Safe to say, the Chiron Super Sport makes life worth living again.
Bugatti knows this, and builds cars to produce exactly this kind of sensation. But as a brand, the company also fits into an entire industry dependent on coddling customers in the life-affirming lap of luxury. And so I happened to fly halfway around the globe to test drive a Chiron Super Sport as a mere amuse bouche to a summit on the future of luxury, sustainability, and human longevity.
What is Luxury Worth?
When ungodly wealth stretches far beyond all basic survival needs and the scintillating, specious glory of existence starts to turns banal, the human mind necessarily seeks further stimulation and craves living longer. Outside of adrenaline-fueled stunts or microdosing of psychedelics, where better to spend time and money than on a steady drip of effluviant luxury and kinds of experiences that enhance the appeal of longer life? The Chiron certainly makes a strong case.
Speakers on hand for the summit range from high-end hoteliers to restaurateurs, fashion executives, and scholars who study luxury as a market phenomenon. Clearly Bugatti keeps an eye on the company’s future, aiming to satisfy the automotive fantasies of the 1 percent of the 1 percent of the 1 percent with spectacular creations that will evolve well beyond the original Veyron hypercar, the current Chiron, and its multiple iterations.
Expert estimates predict that 500 million potential consumers will meet the criteria of “luxury” by the year 2030. Hardly any of those will be able to afford a hypercar, but as the planet’s population continues growing logarithmically, the future of mankind’s survival alone can often seem dubious in the bigger picture.
The irony that Bugatti flew me halfway around the planet on fossil fuel-burning jets to discuss sustainability after driving a quad-turbocharged, 1,600-hp internal-combustion car might have been lost on many at the summit, but not EV phenom and new Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac.
“Humans are more than just eat, sleep and reproduce,” he half-jokes. “I think life is about more. Luxury is like science in many fields—and aspirational, just like space, travel, time travel, nature, or the human genome. It's exploration and aspiration.”
But Rimac also recognizes the quandary of sacrifices necessary for this planet to actually survive humanity’s incessant consumption. As an example, he brings up the global shutdown at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Automotive and airplane traffic tanked by over 70 percent when the world stopped, but emissions dropped by only 5 percent, he claims, as an optimistic calculation.
“My personal view is that there are a lot of superficial things being done, which aren't going to stop us from driving towards the wall at 300 kilometers per hour," says Rimac.
An Out-of-Our-World Experience
As one of the mere mortals allowed to drive a Chiron Super Sport at near warp speed, I recognize how far out of my element this once-in-a-lifetime experience will seem in hindsight. Wallace and I even discuss the palpable feeling of historicity that so few cars, so few creations, can ever hope to imbue. For me, this one drive etched into the stone of memory, is akin to seeing the Space Shuttle circle a victory lap around downtown Los Angeles in 2012. It's another moment where you think to yourself, look at what man hath wrought from the elements.
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Best of all, at 278 miles an hour in a 4,400-pound Bugatti, time technically moves slower. Einstein’s theory of relativity explains space-time with regards to mass and speed, so the faster you go, the more you weigh, and the slower time passes. Two twins, one an astronaut and the other stuck on earth, will age at different rates. Think Matthew McConaughey and Jessica Chastain playing father and daughter in Interstellar.
After judging me a sufficiently capable driver, Wallace never tries to slow me down, only giving subtle hints that perhaps a speed trap or cop camera sits around the next bend. I’m a Bugatti billionaire, after all. I can do what I want.
Is transitioning to electric cars, as Bugatti now will with Rimac, even worth the effort? Well, if mankind can manage an engineering miracle as breathtaking as the Chiron Super Sport, hopefully we can apply the same ingenuity to saving the species, or indeed all species. Planning for the next era at Bugatti belies the fact that eight billion of us every day contribute to the end of life as we know it on this planet. Uber-luxe consumerism undoubtedly seems like an unlikely solution.
Then again, whether posing and positioning in the name of profits or actually making a worthwhile attempt to reduce or reverse carbon footprints, efforts by companies that traffic in luxury goods and experiences may yet result in new technology and production techniques that will trickle down to the masses and manifest a new world ethos.
A middle road exists between the opposing impulses of self-soothing with luxurious illusions or simply going out raging against the dying of the light. Then again, maybe longevity research can help us all live to 120 years old. Regardless, a life that long is undeniably best lived from behind the wheel of a quad-turbo W16 Bugatti Chiron Super Sport.
