Pour L'éternité

A new Bugatti is always a celebration, not because it may be lightning fast or bank-breakingly expensive, but because each new Bugatti brings along an almost tectonic shift at the pinnacle of automotive engineering. Anagh Bhaskar summarizes everything about the new Tourbillon

- Anagh Bhaskar

If it is comparable, it is no longer Bugatti is a motto that best sums up what the Molsheim based automaker creates as it plays on the bleeding edge of automotive engineering. Two decades ago, Bugatti stunned the world with the Veyron 16.4, a car which became an instant icon owing to its astronomical speed going above the 400kmph barrier. But come 2024, and the storied 16-cylinder 8.0-litre quad-turbo which started life with the Veyron, and continued to serve on the Chiron making 1,600bhp in its most potent form has been put out of production. The successor to these cars is a hybrid and it is called the Tourbillon, and this trumps its forebears in every way imaginable.

It's named after the centuries-old Swiss invention, which even today is considered to be the pinnacle of watchmaking. It is this mechanical timelessness that was a core ethos during the Tourbillon’s development phase. The chassis and the body is made from next-gen T800 carbon composite. The front and the rear frames use low pressure thin wall aluminium casting and 3D printed structural braces. Multi-link suspension setups at the front and rear, forged from aluminium, are half the weight of the ones in the Chiron. Interestingly the signature horseshoe grille at the front and huge diffuser, are part of the crash structure. The diffuser is a unique innovation, which starts just behind the passenger cabin, and ends at the rear, and because it is integrated with the crash structure, there is no need for additional bodywork, or crash structure elements.