The Bugatti Bolide is so extreme, you genuinely look at it and wonder if it’s one of those Vision Gran Turismo cars designed entirely for the virtual world. Indeed, even Bugatti’s own Vision GT project is actually a little less extreme than the Bolide. And yet here we are at the 2023 Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard and the Bolide is flying up our Hill in production-ready trim, looking exactly as it did on its initial reveal in 2020.
Video: Bugatti Bolide debuts at the 2023 Festival of Speed
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It remains a track-only car, and thus is without restriction by the rules of the road, or indeed race homologation. That means the W16 quad-turbo engine is relieved of the multiple particulate filters, catalytic converters and more conservative tuning you’ll see in the likes of the Chiron and Veyron.
The Bolide shares very little apart from the W16 engine with its Chiron and Veyron siblings. There’s an entirely new chassis developed with Dallara to an end of reducing weight, the centre of gravity and the overall height of the car. So while a Chiron comes close to two tonnes at the kerb, the Bolide (dry at least) weighs just 1,450kg.
The chassis has also been shaped for a more raked stance to improve the aerodynamics, with the air passing through the Bolide’s porous downforce-generating bodywork. In place of the usual road homologated crash structure at the front, a more LMP-like carbon snout. At the back, the engine and transmission are structural elements with the suspension – near-on the entire rear end of the car hangs from them.
That this most extreme of Bugattis has been brought into the world is perhaps a testament to the significance of the W16, it amounts to a dramatic last hurrah for this legendary piece of engineering. Once all the Bolides – and the last Mistrals – are built, that’s it. The Chiron’s successor is set to use an all-new internal combustion engine in combination with a hybrid system. What an engine it’s been and what a car the Bolide is.
The 2023 Goodwood Festival of Speed is underway! You can watch every moment of the action by watching our live stream.
Photography by Pete Sumers and Nick Wilkinson.
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