By Jeff Glucker
Yesterday, we told you about a bit of fast news courtesy of Molsheim’s finest. A modified Bugatti Chiron was driven to a top speed of just under 305 miles per hour. It’s an insane number for a what’s essentially a production vehicle.
But do you care? Are you impressed?
There’s no denying that it’s a monumental achievement. We’ve relatively quickly jumped from 200 mph being a crazy speed mark, on up to 240. Then 250 arrived and eventually the 270 mark fell courtesy of the Koenigsegg crew. Now we’ve arrived at 300+. And it suddenly feels less dramatic. I think part of this is related to the editing of the video.
It’s downright serene. That could be the desired effect here though, since Bugatti would want to display the fact that its amazing machine can comfortably (relatively speaking) hit outrageous speeds.
This top speed demonstration reminds me a bit of the circular nature of another arena of record smashing adventure. The Nürburgring. It’s there where production and race cars set ever faster times. At first it was thrilling. Over time, we began to get bored with the latest bit of time keeping from the Green Hell. But I feel that’s come around again, thanks to ever faster production cars and wicked racing and electric vehicles driven by those dispatching mind bending runs.
Three hundred miles per hour. What a mental number. And yet I’m here curious if you’re impressed or if you couldn’t care less.
Let me know, below.
I am impressed based on how soon 300 was attained. I personally thought that it would be out of reach for maybe another 5 years or later. If the record went from 270, to 275, to 280, to 281 etc etc the whole aspect would have gotten tedious. To be honest though, after this, it’s just gonna get silly and I frankly may just lose interest
Maybe it’s the very last gas powered dinosaur. EVs are just beginning to show their capabilities. From a motorcycle perpective I can surely say that up to approx 500cc electric power cannot be beaten. Just price and range is an issue, but in my hunch it will be solved. (It is already solved at electric versions of those 50cc class scooters).
If you can’t solve the range issue regardless of cost, you haven’t solved much.
If you can’t solve the range issue regardless of cost, you haven’t solved much.
I’m impressed, but my metric mind would have been much more impressed if they made it to 500 kmh. realizing how crazy 300 mph is takes me a moment for the conversion.
I wonder if they knew how much over the 300 mark they would achieve, that they might have aimed for 500 km/h?
Otherwise to put my cynical hat on, they will sell a couple of versions of the 300 car then turn the wick up slightly (understanding of course that there is significantly more power required for that last 10 km/h) and do the same again with the 500 car.
But to answer the initial question; yes on both counts.
This isn’t a real car for real people. This is a superyacht for the highway. Betcha a lot of the folks buying this car already have a Veyron and likely haven’t taken it to 200. They like the way they look driving it, like that it’s an expression of everything they’ve worked for (or inherited), and you know what? Good for them.
I don’t care in the least. 305 is just another number on the spec sheet (probably right above the price). Don’t get me wrong; this thing is an incredible engineering marvel.
Like a rocket ship. Or a dam. Or a particle accelerator (/wink).
It’s cool that the Chiron can do what it does. But impressive? Nope. What the hell else are they going to do? Prediction: next year the Chiron Superimpresiva will do 310. I’m waaaaay more impressed with a rusty E30 going 80 mph sideways on a narrow forest road with a 20-year-old kid at the wheel, screaming and smiling so hard his face hurts.
Percentage of Veyrons taken over 200 is probably about the same % of new Range Rovers taken off road.
Percentage of Veyrons taken off road?
https://www.arabsturbo.com/site-images/sites/default/files/offline/album/20668/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D9%83%D9%85-%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%AC%D9%86-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83-%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%BA%D8%A7%D8%AA%D9%8A-%D9%81%D9%8A%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%86..%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%A8%D8%A8-%D8%9F-117524.jpg?preset=v3.0_DYNX1200&save-png=1&rnd=051915122014&f=0
Pretty sure that’s a Lambo, dude.
Probably the dude who went to jail for crashing the car would go through the chow line every day, and ask something innocuous like whether his PBJ had grape jelly or blackberry, and the next guy in line would answer with Irishzombieman’s answer. Hilarity would ensue.
Nobody is going to buy this car and use it to go 300 mph for any significant amount of time. But I admire the fact that they had a successful proof of concept.
Remember that when tire manufacturers agreed to speed rating standards three decades ago, H-rating was for high performance cars capable of up to 130 mph. V-rating was for those elite few vehicles that might see 149 mph. And then the scale stopped at Z, which was simply “above 149 mph”. It was assigned the last letter of the alphabet because it was supposed to be all anyone would ever need, but of course the production car practical limit at the time wasn’t much more than the 150’s anyway. Kudos to Bugatti for going twice as fast as the tire experts of the 80’s figured anyone needed to go.
Impressed, yes, interested, not so much. Now if this was a steam-powered Gremlin-conversion piloted by a 90 year old granny finally mastering a life long dream…I’d follow.
Not quite 490 km/h, but still a worthy tribute and memorial to the one man, more than any other, who made the new Bugatti possible.
Vale Ferdinand Piech.
Still the scariest motor executive I ever met.
Man I loved that XL1
Man I loved that XL1
Leave it to VAG to initiate an exercise in dick-lengthening.
What’s impressive to me is that this was done with a car that can actually be driven on the street for the most mundane of events, and you can do so in extreme comfort and luxury. It’s not some race bred, stripped down monster machine. I agree with you that the video was probably edited the way it was to convey this very fact – speed with serenity. But unless you have keys to the gates at Ehra-Lessien, there aren’t a whole lot of places you can run your Chiron that quickly. As for ‘Ring records, just because you bought the fastest Hot Hatch (or sedan, convertible, estate, 4×4, white van, hoopty-wagon, whatever) to ever run through the Eiffel mountains doesn’t mean YOU can copy that speed. There are plenty of slow cars that are an absolute blast to drive, though. My ’74 Alfa Spider will never be accused of being really “fast”, but I’d much rather drive it on real roads than bench race a Chiron against a Regera.