Remember when Bugatti said it was done chasing records? Well, that’s turning out to be a white lie. The W-16 era is coming to an end, but not before the last hurrah for the quad-turbo 8.0-liter monster. Installed in a customer’s Mistral, the marvelous engine helped the roofless Chiron become the fastest open-top production car in history.
Bugatti also misspoke about the Mistral’s top speed. It initially said the gorgeous hypercar would do 261 mph, already more than the 254.04 mph achieved by the Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse in 2013. As it turns out, the Chiron’s swan song is 21 mph faster than originally estimated. It reached 282 mph at the Papenburg test track in Germany. If you prefer metric, that’s 453.9 km/h. That makes it about 22 mph slower than the Chiron coupe upon which it’s based.
Behind the wheel of the record-breaking Mistral was none other than Bugatti test driver Andy Wallace. The Le Mans winner also drove the Chiron Super Sport 300+ to a closed-car top speed record of 304.77 mph in 2019. Only 99 units of the Mistral are being made and the Record Car is claimed to be a one-off. Its striking Jet Orange accents harken back to both Veyron record cars, the 16.4 Super Sport and the aforementioned Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse. The Chiron also had a black and orange theme. By the way, the Mistral’s owner also has the other three record cars.
The Mistral has now dethroned Hennessey’s Venom GT Spyder, which did 265.6 mph back in 2016. Bugatti orchestrated the successful run on November 9 in the presence of Mate Rimac, the CEO of Bugatti Rimac. We’ll remind you he has a 37% share in the Rimac Group, followed by Porsche with 24%, Hyundai with 12%, and other investors with 27%. The Rimac Group has a 55% stake in the Bugatti Rimac company, with the other 45% belonging to Porsche.
The reason why I’m bringing up the shareholder structure has to do with Bugatti’s decision to do the top-speed run in Papenburg rather than at the Ehra-Lessien. The latter test track is owned by the Volkswagen Group, and Top Gear reports Bugatti simply didn’t have access to the facility to conduct the Mistral’s run in the same place where the Veyron and Chiron made history.
Hennessey claims the Venom F5 Roadster can hit the 300-mph mark, but we’ll believe it when we see it. The Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut’s top speed run hasn’t happened yet either, so in the meantime, the Mistral is the undisputed open-top speed king.
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