Bugatti Chiron Super Sport review: a historic moment for mankind – and the combustion engine

There’s a valve on the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport’s 8.0-litre W16 engine. An important one. Up to 4,000rpm it’s closed, so that only two of the four turbochargers are forcing air into the cylinders. Listen carefully and you can hear the very faint, metallic click as it opens, introducing the other two equally massive turbochargers to the equation.

This is just one, tiny, infinitesimal engineering treat for you among many hundreds that enable the Chiron Super Sport’s engine to produce a mighty 1,180lb ft of torque before it even reaches 4,000rpm.

Added to that the long-geared, seven-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox, some serious tyre-tech and aerodynamic fettling, and you have a car that will reach 273mph. Or, actually, you have a car that will do 300mph when derestricted, as proven by former Le Mans 24 Hours racer Andy Wallace earlier in 2022.

Just think about that. This is a car that has cupholders, satellite navigation, electrically adjustable seats and all the comforts of the most richly-primped grand tourers. Perhaps more remarkable is that it has the same servicing schedule as a Ford Fiesta, requiring attention only every 12 months and 12,000 miles.

Bugatti will even throw in four years of unlimited mileage warranty, as well as free servicing for four years. For free! I mean, this is basically a 273mph Kia, right? I’m sure the cost of that servicing isn’t worked into the circa £3.2 million (not including VAT) price…

I could go on for a very long time indeed, talking about all the details on the Chiron Super Sport which is most notably distinguishable from the standard Chiron by the extended rear end, which is 250mm longer. Different exhaust placement, with the pipes separated so that the diffuser can be modified to deal with higher speeds, is also a tell-tale sign.

Attention to detail

Oh, go on then, a few more “cool things” about the Super Sport: there are patented titanium surrounds framing the perimeter of the huge (420mm at the front and 400mm at the back) brake discs. They’re easy to see – they look like they’re straight off the shelf at NASA – and their purpose is to create a vortex of air for improved brake cooling.

I could point you to the hydraulic system that’s responsible for the air-brake, and also for the suspension that lifts the car with comical ease over speed bumps.

I could also point you to the Michelin Pilot Sport 2 tyres. These, by the way, you can now have changed at any Michelin-approved tyre centre. That’s significant because the Veyron had to be returned to its home in France or America for a tyre change because the rubber was so tightly fitted to the alloy wheels in order to stop it slipping at sustained high speeds.

On the Chiron, a glue stops the tyre from literally rotating around the wheel under extreme longitudinal forces, yet the glue can be broken in order to change the tyre more easily.

Is it fun to drive, though, or is it all numbers?

There’s a lot to know about the Chiron Super Sport, then. In fact, to these eyes, it’s the sheer fact that this car can do what it does that is the inherent beauty and appeal of it. The prospect of actually doing the sorts of speeds that the Chiron is capable of is far beyond the limit of what’s actually appealing on public roads, I reckon.

I’ll confess now that, beyond an appreciation of the engineering, I am rarely moved by hypercars. Give me a lightweight Alpine A110 or a Caterham Seven, and I don’t believe I’ll find a car that can make me happier in a “just going for a drive” situation, no matter the power on offer.

Or give me a lightweight electric car that can deliver Alpine-like fun at normal road speeds and I’ll worship at your altar forever. On the subject of electric enthusiast cars, it may even be Bugatti – under new direction from majority shareholder Rimac – that will deliver the next step-change in electrified performance. Who knows?

Anyway, this is why I was a touch uncertain whether I’d actually enjoy the Chiron. After all, 0-62mph acceleration times of sub 4.0sec and even sub 3.0sec are now almost a cliché these days; every other routine, everyday electric car can scorch its way about the place in a thoroughly antisocial fashion if you want it to.

But I’ll return, at this point, to that valve. Because the thing that makes the Chiron utterly brilliant isn’t just its performance, but the way in which it delivers it. It’s an assault of mechanical revelry.

You can actually hear and feel the vastness of the quad-turbo W16, and how much air and fuel it needs as it sucks, whooshes and bellows. The gearbox grinds, clicks and shoves and somewhere amid the sensory assault that valve ticks quietly open.

The closest I’ve come to this sort of experience in any other car is the Nissan GT-R, which is peculiarly similar in the way it gives the impression that you’re piloting a giant, force-fed gearbox when you accelerate hard and hear all the mechanical crunching and booming and screeing as it tries to claw the tarmac off the bare earth.

Unstoppable force

The Chiron is just like that, but the fact that it does it – and keeps on doing it – is the extraordinary feat. It keeps on doing it past 124mph, which it will reach in 5.8sec, then on past 186mph, which it will punch through after only 12.1sec. And on, until it hits its 273mph limiter, at which point it is sucking 1,000 litres of air into the engine and will burn through whatever’s remaining of the 100 litres of fuel that it can carry in about eight minutes.

And it does all of this with such nonchalance. I don’t need to get more than six minutes up the road of our laughably mundane test route before I can say, with confidence, that I am driving the combustion era’s equivalent of Concorde. This is champagne lifestyle, gone supersonic.

With all of those numbers filtering through my head as I steer the Chiron Super Sport around rural France, perhaps the most impressive thing is that this car is weirdly entertaining at normal road speeds.

Perhaps it’s the sheer shaky-handedness that comes with piloting a vehicle that costs more millions than I can even comprehend. Nervous laughter clearly can be its own brand of entertainment.

Or maybe it’s the undeniably intoxicating madness of knowing that you can, if you lose your mind altogether (or maybe if you sneeze really hard at the wrong moment), be travelling at 200mph a few moments later.

Everyday driver

But there is real substance to the way the Chiron goes about a normal, everyday drive. The steering is light, oily and consistent, delivering impressive depth of feedback and confidence whether you’re wheeling it through roundabouts or carving along a favourite sinuous road.

The ride comfort and body control are surreal. The vertical damping is stiff enough that you get a bit of patter; a sense of what’s going on at the road surface around town, in particular.

As is typical with carbon-fibre-tubbed cars, the sheer stiffness of the vehicle also characterises everything that it does including the way that it deals with poor road surfaces. Firm it might be, but the Chiron’s suspension and body movement is ruthlessly controlled and totally free of any jarring or shuddering.

Yet, when you jink through a fast direction change, there’s remarkably little body roll, the front end grips and you find that the Chiron can be playful and engaging. It’s not a one-trick, drag-race pony. It is actually fun. Characterful, even.

There’s real effervescence even when you’re at a steady six- or seven-tenths on a fairly mundane, sweeping road. That is the real magic of the Chiron Super Sport; that you don’t have to plunder its licence-losing depths to enjoy the extent of its engineering witchcraft and wizardry.

And, of course, you also know from the moment that you roll out of the car park that this is a car you’d happily cross continents in. It’s GT, supercar, art installation and engineering wonderland all in one.

Luxe interior

The interior helps with the GT bit of the Chiron Super Sport, too. You sit low down in deep bucket seats that – on our car – were wrapped in beautiful tan leather for a rather classic finish. The ambient lighting around the unmistakable horseshoe curve that divides you from the passenger, the heavy metal finishes on the steering wheel and around the interior; it’s remarkably understated, in its own way.

That horseshoe shape, by the way, which is there on the grille of the Chiron, as well as in the unmistakable sweep that bisects the interior and in all sorts of detailing around the car, is inspired by the work of Ettore Bugatti’s father, who was a furniture maker.

You can even see one of his pieces – a crocodile-themed writing desk that features the telltale sweeping curve – in the Bugatti-owned chateau at Molsheim, where you can have a tour of the grounds and museum there, and probably a spot of lunch while you pick the specification of your car.

Anyway, back to the Chiron; there is a navigation system that pops up on the digital dials, but it’s refreshingly free of touchscreens because Bugatti fears that they would date the car too much. Instead, a few tasteful round dials protrude from the dash, showing you vital statistics, such as how many of the overwhelmingly available horses you’ve just used.

A truly final conclusion

How to conclude a feature about the Chiron Super Sport, then? Well, about the star rating. I thought about this a lot. Ultimately, it’s pointless even to consider the Chiron and other super-exotic cars such as this in the context of any rational vehicular purchase. At £3.5m or more, by the time you’ve paid VAT and chosen the car’s bespoke finery, it is so farcically expensive that it’s just meaningless to the vast majority of us. And those who can afford it do so knowing that it’s more investment than indulgence.

So, what of the star rating? If I could remove it altogether, I would, on the grounds that this barely qualifies as a car, and this also isn’t really a review so much as a vaguely gob-smacked proliferation of words that I have strung together to try and share with you what it feels like to drive a Chiron Super Sport.

I’m not about to start telling you whether the boot is a practical shape (oh, alright – it’s really quite small but you’ll fit in any airline carry-on bag) or whether it has good resale values.

In the end, it had to be five stars, because this is just an extraordinary vehicle. Whether or not you like the excessive consumerism that it represents (and in the light of 2022’s environmental and economic turmoil, it’s easier than ever to see why many might not) it is worth being respectful of what an achievement the Chiron Super Sport is.

That mankind has managed to create such an extravagance of speed, sound, response and luxury in a single, five-metre-long package of composites, metals, wires and oily bits – and only 130 years or so after Karl Benz patented his motor car – is far more important as a milestone in our cultural and technological evolution than it is in when you consider the Chiron in the context of being just “a really fast car”.

So, don’t go thinking that we’re tone deaf to how vulgar this sort of vehicle can seem in today’s landscape. Undoubtedly, Rimac – whose job it now is to take Bugatti to the next step in an electrified world – is also extremely aware of it. The fact that we’ll never see another non-electrified Bugatti is, in itself, a reason to further consider the Chiron as a final, historic, peak moment for the combustion engine.

Whether you view it through a filter of adoration or disgust, or anything in between, the Chiron is an extraordinary feat of human endeavour and technical brilliance. And that, more than any of the numbers or even the comical ease with which you can drive and enjoy the Chiron, is why we are so glad that it exists.

Telegraph rating: Five stars out of five

The facts

On test: Bugatti Chiron Super Sport

Body style: two-door coupé

On sale: now

How much? £3.5 million

How fast? 273mph (limited), 0-62mph in 2.4sec

How economical? 13.2mpg (WLTP Combined)

Engine & gearbox: 7,993cc W16 petrol with four turbos, seven-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox, four-wheel drive

Electric powertrain: none

Maximum power/torque: 1,587bhp @ 7,050-7,100rpm, 1,180lb ft @ 2,250- 7,000rpm

CO2 emissions: 487g/km (WLTP Combined)

VED: £2,365 first year, £520 next five years, then £165

Warranty: four years/unlimited mileage

Spare wheel as standard: no (optional extra)