► Bugatti’s 8.0-litre W16 signs off in style
► Bolide is track only and limited to 40 units
► Top speed of 236mph, produces two tonnes of downforce
As sign-offs go, the Bugatti Bolide is quite the statement. With the V16-engined Tourbillon due in 2026, the venerable 8.0-litre W16 needed to be retired but a quiet send-off wouldn’t have been in keeping with all the records it’s achieved.
Hence the Bolide – a track-only hypercar, limited to 40 cars and priced at £3.5 million each. It runs the same W16 engine as the Chiron Super Sport but it’s housed in an entirely new carbon tub.
What’s new?
Virtually everything. The engine is carried over from the Chiron Super Sport but the rest of the car demonstrates just what is possible with an 8.0-litre, quad-turbo lump when you unleash a ground-up reinvention of the shell housing it.
More intriguingly, is this the car that the engine always deserved? Shorn of 545kg compared to its Chiron sibling, it means that the Bolide almost hits the golden 1bhp/kilo and with all the bespoke chassis and parts, offers the potential for a car that will deliver the driving experience the engine’s numbers always demanded.
In the Bolide, there is no compromise. Full carbon tub by Dallara and built to Le Mans standards, race-esque pushrod suspension with horizontal spring and damper units at the front, direct linked upright dampers at the rear, Michelin slicks (complete with tyre blankets) and a set of stoppers from Brembo that are the largest carbon-carbon brakes in the world, with five-stage ABS. Measuring 390mm across, they can absorb more energy in a single lap than a Formula One car.
It’s the same twin-clutch gearbox but with new ratios and final drive. The bodywork is all-new, developing 2900kg of downforce at 200mph. Bugatti test driver Andy Wallace explains Bugatti could have created even more downforce ‘but then it becomes very sensitive to pitch and therefore difficult to drive. As it is, we have anti-heave damping to prevent dive’.
What are the specs?
How does a top speed of 236mph sound? Less than the Chiron managed but still a huge number, especially when you consider how much aero it generates.
The engine remains the same as it is in the Chiron Super Sport, but when it pumps out 1578bhp and 1180lb ft, you can forgive Bugatti for thinking that’ll probably do. If nothing else, it shows the over-engineering at play in the W16 – the Bolide can develop 2.5g of cornering force but the oil and water pumps remain stock.
0-62mph is over in 2.2 seconds thanks to the 1578bhp and 1180lb ft. It’s also four-wheel drive, like the road cars, so traction is never a problem.
How does it drive?
As incredibly as it looks.
A small cough and then the W16 awakes. Oooh, this is focused, guttural yet also smooth. It’s still mid-engined so the noise mostly does its thing behind you, but the combination of deep power and unsilenced pipes venting 16 rotating pistons is unique on this planet.
The Bolide doesn’t have any of the weird clanks and echoes you get off some track cars because it’s both far better made (although it’s lighter than the Chiron, it still needs to feel like a Bugatti) and the cockpit is more snug. I’ve sat in racing cars that feel like the Albert Hall compared to this.
And then we simply drive off.
This is the odd thing about the Bolide – on the one hand there’s loads of fanfare with it (you need a team of four or five mechanics to help run it and cooling fans get placed in strategic places whenever it’s not moving) but then on the other it’s remarkably Golf-like. Pull a paddle to select first, engage pit lane speed limiter, drive off as if you were going to Sainsbury’s.
The thermobaric shock and awe come five seconds later when you cross the pit-lane exit. Wallace had taken me for a couple of demo laps first but even so, doing it for yourself – actually controlling 1578bhp – is unbelievable. To be able to wield that sort of power and speed simply with your right foot. The only other time I’ve felt acceleration like it was when I drove a V8 rail dragster, but that was over in a quarter mile; the Bolide isn’t constrained in the same way. It simply chews through physics.
With my limited time with the car today, it feels quite digital: stamp on the brakes, stamp on the accelerator. There’s so much of everything – grip, aero, brakes, power – that it can be driven with surprisingly little finesse because it can all be maxed out. Be firm with it, but also smooth. As Wallace explains, ‘If you brake too early, then lift then brake again, it’ll wash out. Don’t modulate [the brake pedal] into the corner.’
As you’d expect from all that downforce, you can commit to the corner easily, the light steering allow you to flick it in with zero fuss. At the end of the pit straight I brake at the 150m board and know I could be later, but it’s not a question of fear preventing me, more that I skipped too many leg days in the gym. I simply don’t have the strength to hit the left hand pedal hard enough. Wallace told me it needs about 90 pounds and I can’t be anywhere near that.
What’s it like inside?
Cosy. There’s not a huge amount of room and, despite it being relatively easy to drive, the view out is restricted, especially through tight left-handers where the front wing obscures your view.
That said, the car does have air conditioning and also comes with pipes so that you can adjust the air flow to where you need it, but with all the engine heat, a racing suit, helmet and the 25-degree ambient we experienced on the day of our test, it’s still warm inside.
The steering wheel is a yoke set-up, with switches to scroll through various settings like altering the ABS or engaging the pit lane speed limiter. The seat is fixed but the pedal box moves, so it’s easy to get very comfortable – I thought I’d find the laid-back seating position alien but in reality you soon forget about that.
Before you buy
Want one? Sorry, they’re all sold. Buyers could personalise them, like you would any Bugatti, but to my eyes that’s slightly wasted on something as brutally effective as the Bolide.
Verdict
If I’m honest, the car left me in a state of shock such is its ability to be both staggeringly fast but also ridiculously competent. The Bolide doesn’t feel like a machine that will take ages to come to you, rather one that you can treat with a surprising amount of brutality and it will keep coming back for more.
If this is the first of more Bugatti track cars, roll on the future.