INSANE IN THE RAIN

When you're invited to drive the 1578bhp, 282mph, convertible Bugatti Mistral, the one thing you don't need is rain. But when it's the final outing for the legendary 8-litre, quad-turbo, W16 engine, you'd be mad not to

- by JOHN BARKER PHOTOGRAPHY by MATT HOWELL

IMAGINE FLYING TO DUBAI TO VISIT THE BURJ Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. You ride the elevators over half a kilometre skywards to the viewing platform on the 148th floor and step out only to find the view obscured by fog. That's kind of how I feel just now. We've trekked to Gatwick, 'enJoyed' an easyJet flight to Basel and rocked up at the Bugatti factory in Molsheim, France, to drive the Mistral, officially the fastest open-top car in the world... and it's absolutely chucking it down. We have just four hours with the car and if it doesn't stop raining we won't even get the roof off, let alone feel the full force of the W16 engine that powers it to a verified top speed of 282.1mph.

All 99 Mistrals were sold as soon as the car was announced, perhaps partly because it represents the end of an era, being the last Bugatti road car powered by the remarkable 8-litre, quad-turbo, W16 engine. All 99 will be delivered to customers by the end of 2026. They have to be because that's when the W16's homologation expires.

Weather apart, there's a satisfying symmetry to my visit. I was last here on a warm afternoon 20 years ago, returning an early example of the Veyron, the first car powered by the W16. It's been quite a journey since. The W16 - effectively two narrow-angle, four-litre V8s spliced to a common crank arrived with an astonishing 1001 PS (987bhp) and departs, two decades later, with an equally astonishing 1600 PS, or 1578bhp in olde money.

For various reasons I've not driven any of the models between Veyron and Mistral, not the Veyron Super Sport or the Grand Sport Vitesse or any Chiron (1500 PS, 1479bhp). However, as chance would have it, I very recently drove an original Veyron again, so by the end of the day I'll have recent experience of the two cars that bookend the W16 era.