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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.

Bugatti reveals track-only Bolide's purpose-designed interior

Bugatti has done a good job of documenting the Bolide's transition from a wild-looking concept car to a limited-edition production model, but we've been missing one key piece of the puzzle: the interior. The wait is over, and the brand revealed what the hypercar looks like inside. Every part of the cabin was developed specifically for the Bolide, so the overall layout looks nothing the Chiron's. Bugatti built the model around a new carbon fiber monocoque, and starting from scratch allowed it to set a new seating position described as race car-like. Fittingly, the Bolide is being developed exclusively for track use. The brand paid special attention to the steering wheel, which features an X-shaped design that echoes the shape of the rear lights. It's easily removable, and Bugatti notes it can serve as decoration when not in use. The driver sits on a seat that's layered directly onto the monocoque, meaning the Bolide is the first Bugatti model built with fixed seats. This solution saves weight because it doesn't require seat rails, and as a trade-off the driver can adjust the steering column and the pedals to find a comfortable seating position. Buyers will have four seat packages to choose from, including one tailored to their exact dimensions. And, like every Bugatti model, the Bolide will be highly customizable: leather, Alcantara and suede are among the types of upholstery offered. Bugatti notes that its test drivers played a significant role in shaping the Bolide's interior. The brand put eight commonly-used buttons on the steering wheel, and it developed a digital instrument cluster with two built-in modes. The first mode displays the kind of advanced data that a test driver would want, while the second focuses on the essentials. There's no touchscreen because there's no infotainment system, but the slanted center console features a handful of buttons as well as four cool-looking climate control system vents shaped like exhaust outlets. Power for the Bolide comes from an evolution of Bugatti's familiar 8.0-liter W16 engine. In this application, it's quad-turbocharged to develop 1,578 horsepower; that's a lot even without context, but it becomes even more impressive when you factor in the car's 3,196-pound weight. Bugatti Bolide production is scheduled to start in 2024 and pricing starts at approximately ˆ4 million excluding taxes, which represents around $4.36 million at the current conversion rate.

Vile Gossip: Ladies who launch

Jean Jennings has been writing about cars for more than 30 years, after stints as a taxicab driver and as a mechanic in the Chrysler Proving Grounds Impact Lab. She was a staff writer at Car and Driver magazine, the first executive editor and former president and editor-in-chief of Automobile Magazine, the founder of the blog Jean Knows Cars and former automotive correspondent for Good Morning America. She has lifetime awards from both the Motor Press Guild and the New England Motor Press Association. Look for more Vile Gossip columns in the future. The year was 2006. We were driving a Bugatti Veyron 16.4 across the Florida Panhandle from Jacksonville to Panama City, only because I couldn't convince Bugatti to let me be the first to drive its exotic powerhouse, the world's fastest car at that time, all the way across America. One gleaming example had arrived in time for the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance, where the journos massed for their quick test drives out the front drive of the Ritz Carlton, down a short stretch of the A1A, and back to the Ritz. Not far enough for me. I wanted to take the Veyron in all of its 16-cylinder, 1,001-horsepower, $1.3-million-dollar glory on a coast-to-coast extravaganza of a road trip. Never hurts to ask. I asked. Once the Bugatti guys stopped hyperventilating, I explained that the coastal adventure would be contained wholly within the state of Florida, from the Atlantic coast to the Gulf of Mexico. My secret destination, however, was to be Vernon, Florida, home of the great Errol Morris' classic documentary about a town in the Panhandle with the highest per-capita population of citizens who'd blown off or whacked off a limb for insurance money. (Google "Nub City.") The Swiss head of Bugatti public relations thought it hilarious. He showed up in a van with a couple of German mechanics to follow us and a failed French Formula 1 driver to serve as my chaperone. I came with a photographer from Germany and one of the most infamous of bad-boy auto magazine tech editors, the irrepressible Don Sherman. Sherman had his own reason for going, and it had nothing to do with a Veyron to Vernon. Once we gave up looking for nubbies, he ordered me to veer south to the handgrip of the Panhandle, familiarly known as the Redneck Riviera. The Don was aiming to secretly execute the Veyron's first Launch Control blastoff in captivity.