Bugatti’s revival is one of the most remarkable automotive stories of the 21st century. Aristocratic, artistic and more than a little mysterious, Bugatti was a pre-war marque that mastered luxury, design and motorsport, creator of Grand Prix winners and perhaps the most luxurious car ever produced, in the form of the early 1930s Type 41 Royale. Then it faded.
It was the late Ferdinand Piëch, the monomaniacal king of the Volkswagen Group, who bought the rights to the name and returned the brand to glory with the 2005 Veyron and its successor, the Chiron. The Super Sport version of the latter remains the fastest production car in the world, having reached a top speed of 304.773 mph in the hands of racing driver Andy Wallace on a German test track in 2019.
How do you follow that—especially in a world in which 2,000-horsepower electric hypercars have completely realigned expectations?
As fate would have it, Bugatti is now controlled by Croatian electric vehicle powerhouse Rimac, the result of a complex 2021 counter-deal with VW and Porsche. So you’d be right to wonder what kind of encore wunderkind Mate Rimac would create for the 114-year-old French legend.
The result is the Tourbillon, a powerful hybrid super-coupe that sees Bugatti looking a hundred years ahead as much as it is calling upon its storied past – but not in the ways you’d expect.
“Icons such as the Type 57SC Atlantic, recognized as the most beautiful car in the world, the Type 35, the most successful racing car ever, and the Type 41 Royale, one of the most ambitious luxury cars of all time, provide our three pillars. inspiration”, says Rimac. “Beauty, performance and luxury formed the blueprint for the Tourbillon; a car that was more elegant, more exciting and more luxurious than anything before it. And like those icons of the past, it would not simply be for the present, or even the future, but pour l’éternité– forever.”
Yes, it’s safe to say that Bugatti is pretty excited about its new creation and has an eye on the pristine lawns of Pebble Beach or Villa d’Este concours events a century from now, positioning its new hypercar as a high and strange technology. as an artisanal response to built-in obsolescence.
Reviving Rimac’s brilliant, all-electric Nevera hypercar was definitely an option, but Rimac is respectful enough of Bugatti’s history to know it would never fly. “So I came up with a proposal to make a whole new car,” he says. He has come an incredibly long way since he was Rimac’s sole employee in 2009.
Instruments of Success
The name Tourbillon will be familiar to its fans high horology. Rather than honoring a former Bugatti racing driver—as in Pierre Veyron and Louis Chiron—the new car references the most elaborate mechanism in watchmaking, a wrist machine whose complexity counteracts the effects of gravity. to maintain the most accurate time possible.
Bugatti’s designers and engineers were seduced by the idea of mechanical timelessness when conceiving the new car, and so the Tourbillon largely rejects the large digital touchscreens in its interior in favor of machined components and a fully analog skeletonized instrument cluster ( another reference to the clock world). — though a small screen slides into view if desired, for Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.
The band consists of more than 600 parts, uses titanium, sapphire and ruby in its construction and remains fixed in place allowing the wheel to revolve around him. Two hands on the central dial indicate engine rpm and speed. On the left are analog readouts for battery and oil temperature; on the right there is a screen showing the power received by the e-motors and the engine.