First Drive: Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 2022 Review

The Bugatti Chiron Super Sport is so extraordinary, so utterly excessive in everything it is and seeks to do, that you might forgive even the most grizzled of old hacks for losing touch with objectivity when left alone in its company. So it is perhaps worth saying now that we understand that to many it is not only an unimaginably expensive irrelevance, but that its size and weight militate against any hope it might have to be the exemplar of what an ultimate driving experience might be.

Then again, while Ettore Bugatti is probably most famous for his Grand Prix cars, he was not in the least averse to the idea of enormous and enormously hefty luxury carriages. His most famous was his gargantuan Type 41 ‘Royale’, which turned out to be a slightly unfortunate title as none of the seven built sold to royalty, but so too was there the still sizeable but somewhat more sensibly proportioned Type 46, and Type 50 too. So say what you like about modern Bugattis, but you cannot say they are not simpatico with their heritage.

The Super Sport is the last version of the Chiron that will be launched, though they are built so slowly (at a rate of around three per fortnight), that it will be 2024 before the last one noses its way out of Molsheim factory gates to make way for its all new successor, an as-yet unspecified hybrid design, the first product of the new Bugatti Rimac company it recently joined. Each one costs £2.7 million. Before options.

For all its power (of which more in a minute) and ‘Super Sport’ nomenclature, the essential point to grasp with this ultimate production Chiron is that it is a pinnacle product for performance and luxury, not sportiness. A three-cylinder Caterham with a 660cc engine is a far more sporting car than this. Even Stephan Winkelmann, the President of Bugatti, describes it as ‘the ultimate Grand Tourer’. So don’t assume because it has a top speed of 273mph (yes, really) that this is a finely honed driver’s tool, because that’s not its purpose.

And given the design constraints such an unfeasible maximum velocity places upon a car, added to all of those already required for worldwide homologation, it’s remarkable the car looks as clean and well-proportioned as it is. Because when you’re dealing with those kinds of speeds, you’re also dealing with conflicting aerodynamic interests. Of course you need to make the car as slippery as possible, but a slippery car is not always a stable car when you’re covering a mile in considerably less than 15 seconds, so downforce needs to be added, but with downforce comes drag which means your car is slippery no longer. Bugatti’s compromise therefore has been to design a car with enough downforce to eliminate all lift at top speed but add not one kilo more, so that it remains aerodynamically completely neutral, which is the optimum blend of aero efficiency and stability.

To aid the Super Sport’s top speed, the tail has been extended by 25cm to retain laminar flow as long as possible while to generate more downforce with a minimal drag penalty the rear diffuser has been enlarged, requiring the central exhaust system to be moved to the side to make space for it.

At the front new side air curtains help the flow of air down the side of the car while the nine holes above each front wing are not only a knowing cap doff to the 1990s EB110 Super Sport, but also prevent air building up in the wheel-arch creating unwanted lift.

You might have thought that an 8.0-litre, W16, quad-turbo engine already producing 1,500PS (1,103kW) was in little need of more power. For the Super Sport however, Bugatti thought otherwise. Nor did it simply ‘turn up the wick’ on the existing engine, for that is not the Bugatti way. So it was fitted with larger turbos with more efficient compressor wheels and an entire suite of other modifications to the cylinder heads, valve gear and oil pump, not to mention the British-built Ricardo gearbox and its associated clutches, the aim of which was not simply to accommodate the additional torque, but also the car’s elevated top speed.

In theory the result is another 100PS (73kW) to give 1,600PS (1,177kW), but in reality this is the very least any Chiron Super Sport is likely to develop. The car in these photographs for instance, produces 1,614PS (1,187kW). The Super Sport’s additional power comes largely at the top end where peak revs have been extended from 6,800rpm to 7,100rpm. And if the kind of energy required to spin an 8.0-litre engine at over 7,000rpm while developing over 1,600PS makes your brain fog over, consider that when flat-out the engine requires a cubic metre of air to breath, every single second.

To help keep the car stable, the Chiron adjusts its ride height according to speed and the selected drive mode, and can deploy its rear wing as an air brake when required to decelerate rapidly from high speed.

At low speeds, which in Chiron-speak is any speed at which you can legally drive in the UK, its performance is actually quite limited, at least by the standards of what it does thereafter. Because despite enormous, sticky, bespoke Michelin Cup 2 tyres, all-wheel-drive and all that weight, the Chiron is massively traction limited at such modest velocities. So you have to see its 0-62mph time of 2.4 seconds in that context. More instructive is the fact it does rest to 124mph in 5.8 seconds and 0-186mph in 12.1 seconds.

For those perhaps struggling to put these figures in context, because they are translations from kilometres per hour (0-100, 200 and 300km/h) to miles per hour, a little simple plotting reveals a 0-60mph near enough unchanged but possibly, 2.3 seconds, a 0-100mph time of around 4.5 seconds and a 0-200mph of approximately 15 seconds. Now consider this: any car that can reach 100mph in 10 seconds can be considered to be very quick indeed, even by modern standards: this Chiron takes very little longer to get from that 100mph mark to 200mph. Put another way, and this really gives an idea of the level of performance you experience when you let a Chiron Super Sport loose, is that it will take you from rest to 200mph in little more than half the time you’d require in a McLaren F1. And even then it doesn’t slow much: give yourself just half a minute from rest and by the time the alarm pings on your watch, you’ll be doing over 250mph…

But these numbers bamboozle before long. What does it actually feel like? At first and while the car is still traction limited, the way it gathers speed is a simple joy to experience. With an enormous roar from the W16, the Chiron appears to grab the scenery around you, rip it loose and pull it towards you. Depending on your temperament but regardless of your experience level, it will leave you either giggling or gasping. So far so good.

Then, however, it gains grip and does something else entirely. Thanks to that power readout you can ease yourself into this experience by deciding, for example, to change up at 4,000rpm and therefore be propelled forward by only a trifling thousand horsepower or so. But sooner or later you’re going to want to experience it all and then there is no place for giggles and gasps. Such is the incalculable ferocity with which the Chiron Super Sports cannons you across the landscape when it can finally deploy all its potential, space remains only for dumbstruck silence. It feels physically violent, an experience so disorienting that even if you had the legal space in which to repeat the experiment time and again, you’d almost certainly choose not to. Without exaggeration, this is performance of a level that makes that of more normal supercars feel like hot hatchbacks.

And you can tell that everything in the way the car has been set up is that way to help the driver safely manage and marshal this performance. The entire suspension system has been reworked for the Super Sport and above all the feeling it provides is one of massive, almost impregnable stability. Yes, you can break the back loose if you perform an all-out acceleration run on a damp and bumpy road but even here is doesn’t skid, slide or do anything to make you want to lift off. It just skips a bit until traction is found.

The steering is quick but linear and guides the car with unfailing precision through quick corners. There’s real feel here despite the weight of the car and its electrically assisted rack, which probably has something to do with a pump that all by itself costs £25,000… The Chiron really is outstandingly composed, but it’s not the kind of car you’d choose to throw around: weighing two tonnes and configured for maximum stability, it’s just not a natural state for the car, and that’s before you consider where there might be enough safe space to indulge in such antics, and the price of getting it wrong.

As for the ride and refinement, at a gentle cruise it’s so quiet and comfortable you’d not only be able to drive it all day, you’d absolutely leap at the chance.

The cabin of the Chiron is actually remarkably understated, though in terms of colours and materials it really is limited only by what is legal, ethical and the owner’s imagination. But essentially here you’ll find only the finest quality leather and flawless carbon-fibre. You might spot the air vents on top of the doors and note their disappointingly plastic-like appearance, but the point is they only appear that way: they’re actually made out of titanium so why Bugatti chooses to paint them eludes me. It’s only a detail, but it speaks for the entire approach taken for this car.

There’s plenty of space even for drivers approaching two metres in height and while the dashboard is endlessly configurable, as are the multitudinous driving modes, the presentation is simple and minimalist. There’s not even a separate nav screen. Instead there are four central rotary dials, with displays that can show pretty much anything you like, but which are never more exciting than when displaying the peak power, speeds, revs and G-force enjoyed during your journey.

All it lacks is somewhere to put luggage. There is a compartment under the nose that will take one small compressible bag, but not much else. Then again, if you’re financially in Chiron Super Sport territory, you can certainly afford send the Range Rover and chauffeur ahead to unpack your bags before you arrive.

You can dismiss the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport a billionaire’s plaything if you like. What you cannot do, at least with any credibility, is dismiss the depth of the design excellence that has gone into it. The quality you see on the outside, and in the cabin, pervades down to the smallest component on the car, never to be seen by its owner. It is an exercise in the art of the possible in which producing the world’s fastest production car is merely the starting point.

Truth is, it’s not the top speed nor the wild ride that takes you there that is even close to this car’s greatest achievement. Those merely grab the headlines. It’s how it does this with such civility that, were it not for its size and value, you could use the Chiron as a daily driver. It is a car of absolute engineering integrity that doesn’t just do stuff other cars can’t do, it does them in style and with insouciant ease. An irrelevance? To many, perhaps. A towering achievement as worthy of that horseshoe grille as any other Bugatti road car? Without the slightest doubt.