ON THE SHOULDERS OF A GIANT
Stunning new Centodieci takes inpiration from the EB110 Super Sports
THE LAUNCH OF any Bugatti is a major event. After all, it isn’t very often that a whole new model comes along – about once a decade since the company’s rebirth under the visionary Romano Artioli, in fact.
That goes some way to explaining the massive blast of publicity accorded to the new Centodieci. The CIA-rivalling secrecy surrounding the car until it broke cover recently during Monterey Car Week just added to the mystique and drama. So when the new car was unveiled, awash in visual cues from the EB110, it ramped up the hype even more – especially with all those pictures of it posing with our feature car and others.
Bugatti openly admits that the Centodieci’s inspiration was the EB110; heck, even the name translates from Italian as ‘110’. Stephan Winkelmann, president of Bugatti, said: ‘With the Centodieci we pay homage to the EB110 Super Sports car, which was built in the 1990s and is very much a part of our tradition-steeped history. With the EB110, Bugatti catapulted itself to the top of the automotive world once again after 1956 with a new model.’
Bugatti’s head designer Achim Anscheidt added: ‘We faced a number of technical challenges in terms of the development and design of the Centodieci. The EB110 is a very flat, wedge-shaped and graphically quasi-twodimensional
super sports car of the late 1980s. Transporting this classic look into the new millennium without copying it was technically complex, to say the least.’
Mechanically, there is one huge difference between the EB110 and its heir – instead of a V12 powerplant, the Centodieci is powered by the 8-litre W16 that develops 1600bhp at 7000rpm. That means the Centodieci can sprint from nought to 100km/h in 2.4 seconds and the top speed is electronically limited to 380km/h (235.6mph).
But the real acid test is what Artioli thinks of it. Before seeing the Centodieci, he certainly welcomed the concept of a ‘tribute’ car: ‘I read the rumours about a new Bugatti being presented at Pebble Beach and it being inspired by the EB110… it would mean a lot to me, to my whole family, and to my old companions at Bugatti Automobili.
‘The EB110 SS was designed to last for a long time, into the future, and for this reason all the technical solutions that had been anticipated are present today in the new Bugatti cars. I would be very pleased if even the design of the possible future Bugatti was inspired by the EB110 SS, which is still contemporary. The EB110 was a car ahead of its time, 110% worthy of carrying the name Bugatti. I might not be the most impartial person in this matter, but no other car deserves a tribute more than the EB110.’