Chiron THE VERDICT
World exclusive first drive by Chris Harris 1479 bhp, 261 mph, £2.5m. This changes everything
Only now! locked as we are in the vortex of a marketplace that somehow places enormous value on rubbish like a Ford Escort XR"i! has the world woken up to the Bugatti Veyron# There has never been a point in time when unworthy motor cars were worth so much! and yet perhaps the most ambitious supercar ever devised is only just beginning to win the status it deserves# I’ve just driven the new Bugatti Chiron $ boy! it really does feel good to type that $ and to fully understand where Bugatti has taken its latest machine! we really do need to spend a few minutes understanding the Veyron#
Because the Veyron’s significance transcends its obvious performance qualifications# Yes! it was the fastest! most complicated! most expensive thing available at the time! but it also prefaced a new technology language $ one that virtually all modern fast cars have now adopted% turbocharging! all&wheel drive and perhaps most significant of all! the dual&clutch gearbox# The Veyron was essentially Volkswagen’s then&boss Ferdinand Piëch showing the world what his vast conglomerate could achieve# It was his Saturn V moment# And it was nearly as costly#
And yet the world never fell in love with the Veyron# It was never a poster car in the mould of a Countach or an F'( $ somehow Piëch created a kind of million&dollar Audi Quattro that we respected but didn’t crave and desire# If the Chiron has two unenviable tasks! the first is perfectly obvious $ it must out&number the Veyron in every single area# The second is more subtle and perhaps more difficult to achieve% it has to become a poster car# It surely has to make those of us who could never afford such a machine desperately want to drive and own one# To want a poster of one# Because that is how legends are made#
We spent three days filming with the Chiron for the television show# They were intense! astonishing and fascinating! but this was a day to myself# A reset button to stop and consider quite what Mr Durheimer and his team have created+ ,' hours to get further under that carbon skin# But to me I still only had a day to drive the Chiron at my own pace# Just a day# It seems churlish to insert the word “only” into that sentence when so few people will ever be as
car than a Citroen 2CV. Even the vast 420mm-diameter carbon silicon carbide front brakes would succumb after a few laps shouldering 1,995 kg, and I have no doubt that the Michelin Cup! rubber would suffer a similar fate"
Maybe a road? That’s a good place to begin testing a road car" But this bought back memories of my day in a Veyron back in 2006, a time when we were a little less worried about instant incarceration for small speeding indiscretions" Anything more than three seconds of full-throttle acceleration left me wondering if it was the sheer motive force or the consequences of the law discovering what speeds it created that bothered me the most" VW had built an engineering masterpiece, there just wasn’t the space to use it"
And then someone said there was a wonderful place on the border between Dubai and Abu Dhabi' the Jebel Hafeet road" I google-mapped the location and swallowed hard because it looked like just the kind of technical nightmare to undo a big' heavy machine like this one" But what is the point of this car if it can’t be used and enjoyed on such a road?
I didn’t much like the way the Chiron looked when I first saw it in pictures' and that opinion didn’t change when I clapped eyes on it in the flesh - the nagging proportional similarity to the Veyron left me thinking it was just a clumsy facelift" Expectations were low enough' but when Bugatti told me the car was painted gold I packed a precautionary sick bag' and when they unloaded it I winced and then - well' I underwent something of an epiphany" Either that or I finally went loopy' because it looked superb" Almost square thanks to its vast tracks and low roofline' despite being )!mm taller than the Veyron" Is there something about Middle Eastern light that draws a honey-like warmth from the colour gold? Maybe I’ve just stumbled into taste Hades' but I just stood there and gawped"
Pre-drive warming duties were left to Andy Wallace' a man who won Le Mans when the cars were terrifyingly powerful" Asked just how potent it felt' he proffered one of those jokey-but-serious nods. “Ridiculously"” OK" Gulp"
The Veyron wouldn’t have worked on Jebel Hafeet" The strange Michelin PAX system tyre would have squidged and squirmed' the steering would have given the driver little idea of what was actually going on underneath and by the time the four turbos had exerted maximum pressure those poor brakes would have been straining for the next turn"
Within a few minutes the Chiron shredded those preconceptions" This is a road best suited to something the size of a //