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Bugatti Bolide's Le Mans-ready underpinnings highlighted

The limited-edition, track-only Bugatti Bolide uses the familiar 8.0-liter W16 engine, but writing it off as merely a rebodied Chiron would be a cruel understatement. The French company is highlighting the new monocoque it developed for the model to show some of the differences. While nothing suggests that Bugatti will enter the Bolide in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the model's carbon fiber monocoque is capable of withstanding such an arduous race because it was designed to the meet the same requirements that apply to LMDh cars. Starting with a blank slate allowed engineers to move the quad-turbocharged engine forward by about 2.4 inches to better integrate it into the monocoque.  Bugatti then turned its attention to what it calls one of the most difficult requirements to meet: rollover protection. LMDh regulations require a car to withstand a 7.5-metric-ton load on each A-pillar without bending more than approximately two inches. Additionally, the car fails this test if the A-pillar breaks within about four inches of the impact point. The upcoming Bolide passed this test as well as two other roll-over tests. There's more to safety than the ability to withstand one hell of an impact. Bugatti installed an automatic, military-grade fire extinguisher system and integrated the outer section of the headrests into the doors to facilitate the task of getting in and out of the cockpit. It also added six-point harnesses for the two passengers but it didn't forget about comfort: a high-performance climate control system comes standard. Running the air conditioning at full blast shouldn't have a noticeable effect on performance, as power comes from an 8.0-liter W16 engine that's quad-turbocharged to develop 1,578 horsepower. The Bolide weighs under 3,200 pounds and develops 6,600 pounds of downforce.  Bugatti will continue testing the Bolide in the coming months, and deliveries are scheduled to start in 2024. Production is limited to 40 units, and pricing starts at approximately ˆ4 million (about $4.29 million at the current conversion rate). Every example is already spoken for. Related video: Featured Gallery Bugatti Bolide monocoque Bugatti Coupe Racing Vehicles Performance

How design follows function in the Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport and Super Sports 300+

As the successor to the world-beating Veyron, the Bugatti Chiron had big shoes to fill, and by every measure it has succeeded. With its 304-mph top-speed run last fall, the latest Bugatti hypercar has handily beaten all expectations, and Bugatti President Stephan Winkelmann has even publicly stated that the company will no longer chase speed records. One could argue that the Chiron's work here is done, and yet it's merely half way through its projected lifecycle. What more could it possibly accomplish? Bugatti's answer: Go faster on a road course. To accomplish this, the Chiron Super Sports 300+ formula would have to be cast aside for something entirely new. After all, the things that make a car fast in a straight line are only part of the equation when it comes to conquering a race track, and with that mission, the Chiron Pur Sport was born. These two models' diverging missions necessitated distinct design. To learn more about just how differently they were formed, Autoblog attended a virtual round-table with Frank Heyl, Bugatti deputy design director, and Jachin Schwalbe, Bugatti head of chassis development. The distinctions are most evident in their profiles, where the longtail design of the Super Sports 300+ radically alters the Chiron's entire rear "box," making the Pur Sport's sharp rear cut-off seem almost inelegant by comparison. The slow, clean taper of the longtail design accomplishes the same thing aerodynamically that it does aesthetically. When the car is in top-speed mode, the rear spoiler even remains stowed. This design significantly shrinks the low-pressure zone behind the car, reducing the resulting drag, but that absent spoiler also detracts from the Chiron's stability. To compensate for the lack of spoiler deployment, Bugatti's engineers altered the flow beneath the car and through the rear diffuser. Heyl describes this as "free" downforce, because there's no corresponding penalty in drag from gains found with these underbody features.   With the Pur Sport, Bugatti went the other direction. This track-focused car gives up a ton of top speed to its sibling in exchange for nimbleness and acceleration, so being able to cut the minimum hole in the air is far less important. Think of design as a zero-sum game, Bugatti's team says.

Watch a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport hit 246 mph during road rally

The Bugatti Veyron might be getting on in years, but it's still an engineering marvel capable of truly insane velocity. There are tons of videos of the Veyron doing its super-high-speed trick of reaching 200 miles per hour with seemingly no effort. But do you know how much ground the coupe is actually covering at full chat? Let's just say it's mighty impressive.
According to the YouTube description, this video was shot at the 2014 Sun Valley Road Rally in Idaho. The event shut down a portion of highway and allowed cars to hurtle down that stretch at ludicrous speeds, and a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport with 1,200 horsepower on hand showed the crowd what fast really looked like. Thankfully, the organizers monitored the vehicles' speed, confirming that this supercar managed a massive 246.4 miles per hour.
The way that the Veyron reaches that momentum is just as impressive, though. At first, all you see is a fast-moving white spec, but it doesn't sound like a car. It has more of the constant note of a jet but with a little audible grumble as it streaks by. Scroll down to see what nearly 250 mph looks like on a deserted stretch of highway.