Bugatti Chiron Super Sport put to the test: a daily driver with 273 mph ratings in 2021

So what is that?

This is the elongated and inflated Bugatti Chiron that Andy Wallace drove at 304,773 mph in 2019 – the first production car to break the 300 mph. Well … at least a rough approximation of that. After this quick day in Ehra-Lessien, Bugatti announced that it would build 30 special editions of the Chiron Super Sport 300+ that are optically and mechanically based on the record-breaking car (albeit limited to 273 miles per hour for reasons of tire and life conservation). with the same 8.0 liter quad turbo W16 engine boosted by 100 to 1,578 horsepower, all 30 in the same black and orange striped paint scheme and costing £ 3 million each. There’s also the mechanically identical ‘Standard’ Super Sport model as it’s driven here – available from £ 2.6m in any color you want … as long as you don’t copy the 300+ edition.

So how many super sports are being made?

As many as you want. Somehow. Bugatti will only ever build 500 Chirons, but with a mixture of Chiron, Chiron Sport, Chiron Pur Sport and Super Sport. The special models of bodies – Divo, Centodieci, Voiture Noire – are at the top of the 500. In fact, the standard models from Chiron and Chiron Sport have reached the end of their homologation series. So if you have a few million left over, the only choice you have is between Pure Sport and Super Sport. My heart is bleeding.

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Difficult Decision. What would you go for

Glad you asked. This can best be imagined as a Chiron Streamliner – the Chiron Pur Sport and the Bugatti Divo tend more towards cornering, lap times and maneuverability, while Super Sport is essentially about minimizing air resistance and maximizing straight-ahead speed. It can still move around a track, maybe not to the same extent, but its range is definitely wider than that of the hardcore models. In view of the fact that the Chiron was always designed more as a monster GT and not as a track rat, it would be a super athlete for me all day.

It. Looks. Crazy. What’s new

At the front corners, air curtains smooth out the air on the side of the car, but they also help draw warm air and turbulence out of the front wheel arch. At high speeds the pressure build-up in the arch is strong, if there was nowhere to go it would find its way under the car and create buoyancy – hence the vents behind the arch and the holes punched in the top – a nod to the EB110 Super sport.

The back is the business end of this car. The body is lengthened by 250 mm in order to maintain the laminar flow longer and to reduce the aerodynamic stall by 40 percent. Translated into TG: to make it as slippery as a bowl of noodles in baby oil. Gone is the horizontal stack of four exhausts, replaced by two sprawling double stacks that leave room for a much larger central diffuser. This means that the car remains on the road in top speed mode even when the wing is fully retracted. Keep in mind that any downforce created under the car is done with no drag penalty as opposed to putting something in the airflow on the top of the car, which perfectly suits the high speed demands of this car.

And then there are the tires – bespoke Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 with a special reinforced construction that helps them withstand the extreme forces at 250 mph and beyond. For example, the tires experience a tear force of seven tons at 304 miles per hour: the equivalent of removing a tire from the rim, putting a chain on it, and hanging three and a half chirons on it.

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The interior is still special, dominated by the central horseshoe-shaped partition next to you and the central analog speedometer with 500 km / h in front. But there’s a beautiful simplicity in design, a focus on the best possible materials wherever you look and touch, so it’s actually worth the price. There is only the information you need on the screens next to the speedometer and a quartet of dials on the dashboard to set the air conditioning … and keep a log of the engine’s maximum power consumption, top speed, and top RPM. This car actively drives you.

Which settings are available to you?

Many. Several miles of straight road to play with? You want the top speed mode activated by the speed button – hands down the coolest single feature in any car – that’s on your left thigh. Remove it, put it in, and flip it when you’re parked, and the car will tell if you can handle it – by lowering the ground clearance, pulling in the underbody fins to vent the downforce from the front, and a row perform other security checks. Are tires older than two years? Access denied.

The four modes on the wheel-mounted dial are available without a second key. An access altitude mode that turns off at 50 km / h, your all-purpose Bugatti mode, a track mode that loosens the ESC and adds an additional four degrees of wing, and a highway mode that gives you 20 additional degrees of bow tilt to things stable if you are late for your meeting in Munich.

Then where did you go?

This was an act in three parts. We picked up the car at the plant in Molsheim, looked our way through the traffic to the German border, blew up the autobahn and then drove around the Nürburgring. During a tourist meeting. Remarkably, Bugatti agreed to this plan.

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Easy to use at slow speeds?

Just stupid. And that is what distinguishes Bugatti from others – the technology, the attention to detail with which something so powerful and capable trickles through the traffic at unimaginable speeds, the transmission in the background indistinct, is overwhelming. Andy Wallace (my co-driver, Bugatti test driver, guy who drove a McLaren F1 at 250 mph, a Chiron at 304 mph, and with whom I chat casually as I go through the congested center of Saarbrücken navigate) via a Chiron owner who has already covered 50,000 miles. I can’t say how happy this makes me because this is a car that wants to be driven regularly, it’s just so outrageously usable.

But you went quick too, didn’t you?

Come on who do you think I am Finding a decent stretch of quiet, closed freeway on a Tuesday lunchtime isn’t easy … but we did it. And my word, the way this thing fires up the turbos, girdles its loins, and then detonates you down the street is a slightly terrifying but magical experience. Because with all that power through your back comes unshakable stability and a feeling of complete control. I don’t dare to look at the speedometer in case one of my traffic colleagues gets nervous, but I hold it until a gentle curve in front of me looks like a hairpin. “What did we hit Andy?” I ask, the words sticking in my suddenly completely dry throat. “211 mph, you used 1615 hp (1593 hp) and got around 6,950 rpm,” replies Andy, looking a bit like a proud father. The fastest I’ve ever driven on a hitchhike. And we’re on a public street. Internal fuse blown.

But in all honesty, you could do it too. Your grandparents could, if they had enough space. This car turns superhuman achievements into low-hanging fruit. Perhaps more impressive than my personal best is an early abandoned attempt where a corner arrives earlier than expected, so I turn at 190 mph and it just stuck. Better than that … it feels good.

The new wave of electric hypercars – including the Chiron’s new roommate, the Rimac Nevera – might cover it off the line, but the super sport’s roll-on performance, the way it goes from 100 mph to 200 miles races per hour is just a different sauce. It also feels more exciting, with mechanical processes you can feel, hear and smell. We pray that Mate Rimac will find a home for this engine or derivative in a future Bugatti model.

Did you mention the Nürburgring?

Oh yeah, this old place. It usually started raining the moment we rocked up to the Devil’s Diner parking lot at the entry gate – surrounded by limp pine trees and a sea of ​​cell phone cameras. Bringing someone else’s £ 3million hypercar on cut slicks to a public session on the world’s scariest racetrack in biblical weather is clearly not the thing to do. Who knew

I would like to tell you that I got to know the limits of the side G of super sports, delighted you with stories of gentle eruptions in four-wheel drifts, heroic speeds around the carousel or how powerful the brakes were at the end of the straight … but in reality, this was one of the dumber things Top Gear did.

In one corner it is clear that this is a struggle for survival … and my family’s solvency. To have a meaningful purchase on the surface, cups need 2s temperature – around 35 degrees a curve when wet, but heating them up when something faster than a jog and a touch of a steering wheel lock corresponds to a code brown moment is as good as not possible. So we slide around like on ice, waiting to hit something and steal tomorrow’s headlines. As if by a miracle we make it around.

Even more wondrous, Andy Wallace agrees to drive a shotgun himself and confirms that it’s pretty undrivable out there. Still, what a day. What a car.

Photography: Dennis Noten