The return of Bugatti is one of the most remarkable events in the history of the 21st century automobile. Aristocratic, artistic and a little esoteric, Bugatti was the pre-war brand that epitomized luxury, design and motorsport, the creator of Grand Prix-winning cars and arguably the most luxurious automobile made in the early 1930s. Type 41 RoyaleAnd then it was gone.
The late Ferdinand Piëch, the manic leader of the Volkswagen Group, bought the rights to the name and restored glory to the brand with the 2005 Veyron and its successor, the Chiron, a Super Sports version of the latter achieving a top speed of 304.773 mph at a German test track in 2019 in the hands of racing driver Andy Wallace, and it remains the fastest production car in the world.
How do you follow that, especially in a world where 2,000-horsepower electric hypercars have completely realigned expectations?
In a twist of fate, Bugatti is now owned by the Croatian EV giant Rimac. A complex contra deal in 2021 with VW and Porsche. So it’s natural to wonder what kind of encore genius Mate Rimac has in store for the 114-year-old French legend.
The result is the Tourbillon, an imposing super-coupé hybrid that allows Bugatti to both make history and look 100 years into the future – but not in the way you might expect.
“The icon is Type 57SC AtlanticKnown as the most beautiful car in the world Type 35the most successful racing car of all time, and Type 41 Royale“One of the most ambitious luxury cars of all time, the Tourbillon is our three pillars of inspiration,” says Rimac. “Beauty, performance and luxury formed the blueprint for the Tourbillon. It was a car that was more elegant, more emotional and more luxurious than any that had come before it. And like those iconic cars of the past, it was designed not just for the present or the future, eternallyeternally.”
That’s right, it’s fair to say Bugatti is pretty excited about its new creation, and is looking to the clean lawns of Pebble Beach and Villa d’Este concours events a century from now, positioning its new hypercar as both dizzyingly high-tech and a slick riposte to built-in obsolescence.
Re-skinning Rimac’s stunning all-electric hypercar, the Nevera, was certainly an option, but Rimac respects Bugatti’s history and knew that would never be accepted. “So we came up with the proposal to build a completely new car,” he says. He’s come a very long way since he was Bugatti’s only employee. Rimac It dates back to 2009.
Means of success
The name Tourbillon Luxury WatchesRather than paying tribute to former Bugatti racing drivers, like Pierre Veyron and Louis Chiron, the new car references one of the most intricate mechanisms in watchmaking: a complex wrist-mounted machine that counteracts the effects of gravity to keep the most accurate time possible.
When Bugatti’s designers and engineers were conceiving the new car, they were fascinated by the idea of mechanical timelessness, which is why the Tourbillon largely foregoes large digital touchscreens in the car, opting instead for machined parts and a fully analog, skeletonized instrument cluster (another reference to the world of watches), though smaller screens for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto slide in when needed.
The cluster is made up of over 600 parts and is constructed using titanium, sapphire and ruby, and the steering wheel is fixed to it, Rotate itThe two needles on the central dial show engine revs and speed, while to the left is an analogue readout for battery and oil temperature, and to the right is a display showing the power delivered by the electric motor and engine.
