2017 Bugatti Chiron Review
Channel: Auto Today
Date: 2017-01-03

2017 Bugatti Chiron Review.
“Where the hell do you put silverware in a Bugatti?” the customs officer asked, staring at the eating utensils packed in engineer Dennis Rohlfs’s fancy aluminum Zarges case, which was otherwise filled with spare parts for hot-weather testing of the new 1500-hp Bugatti Chiron. At Bugatti, even the engineers have expensive luggage. Rohlfs explained that he wanted to show good manners in America by using a knife and fork when eating the hamburgers he expected to be deluged with out in the desert west. Shaking his head, the customs officer let the weird foreigner pass. Welcome to America.

That episode was two weeks ago, and Rohlfs’s silverware remains unused, lying in his box between the cables, seals, and other exotic Bugatti bits. He has already learned to eat burgers with his hands, lest he draw unwanted attention or marriage proposals, and those same hands are currently on the steering wheel of “PT5.10.” That’s the glamorous name for our blue-and-white development car, what the industry calls a “pre-series” model from the earliest stages of production. Together with three more Chiron development cars, PT5.10 is cruising on 120-degree tarmac, the tires a toasty 149 degrees by the test-equipment sensors.

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It is 10 a.m., and we are loafing along doing the double-nickel. Fifty-five mph is not even one-quarter the car’s top speed. The crankshaft of the huge 8.0-liter, 16-cylinder Gorgon in back turns lazily at 1500 rpm in seventh gear. “That’s a moderately raised idle speed,” says Rohlfs, smiling. Out from Volkswagen headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, Rohlfs is responsible for a very specific widget on the W-16, the ionization-current misfire-detection system that effectively turns each spark plug into a sensor. Judging from Rohlfs’s nonchalance, the Bugatti is barely breaking a sweat. This despite the fact that it’s being slow-roasted on the pavement of Death Valley, where the famously lung-collapsing summer heat annually draws a few German tourists intent on proving their ­hardiness by jogging into the fiery teeth of the afternoon—only to be later found as dead as dried prunes.

And why should any of the car’s readings be abnormal? Isn’t the W-16, as well as the rest of the Chiron, but a mere evolution of the gobsmacking Veyron that preceded it? The Veyron went into production in 2005, and, after 450 copies built, how many glitches can there possibly be left to uncover? Well, it’s not quite that simple, we found out after talking with Bugatti’s head of engineering, Willi Netuschil, and his team, also frying their carcasses out here in Death Valley for the glory of Molsheim.

“We started the development of the Chiron as a facelift of the Veyron, and we ended up with a completely newly developed high-performance car,” he explains. In particular, the goal of raising horsepower from 1200 in the late, great Veyron Super Sport to 1500 in the Chiron led engineers to make a few conceptual changes. The Chiron is no power-tuned Veyron. “It is a completely new car with different driving behavior,” Netuschil insists. Well, okay!

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