- 5 months ago
Just your average $6 million
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00:00Hi there, I'm Johnny Lieberman. You are watching Motor Trend and this is the
00:22Chateau that Ettore Bugatti purchased over 100 years ago when he founded his
00:28car company, Bugatti. And for the last 20 years Bugattis have been made here in
00:36Molsheim, France and they've had one special feature that's really separated
00:41them from the rest of the automotive industry and that is a big fat 8-liter
00:45quad-turbo W16 motor behind the driver's head. It started with the Veyron and it
00:54ends here with the Bugatti Mistral. Now there is a new Bugatti coming, it's
01:00called the Tourbillon. It has a naturally aspirated V16 plus three electric motors
01:05but this is the last of the purely mechanical Bugattis.
01:12The Veyron made a thousand and one horsepower with that engine configuration.
01:16the Mistral which doesn't even have a roof makes 1578 horsepower and the cool
01:24thing about Bugattis is since every engine is unique they typically even make more
01:29power than advertised. That's true with this one too. Now you're about to meet a
01:33man named Andy and Andy took this car and went 282 miles per hour actually
01:40slightly more than 282 miles per hour without a roof. This is the literal
01:46fastest open-top vehicle in the world.
02:03You know before we get going we should talk about the differences between the
02:08Mistral and the Chiron at least from a design point of view. First thing to
02:11know is that the Mistral is not part of the 500 Chirons that were built. That
02:17production actually ended a while ago. The Mistral has been in production since
02:202024 and they're finishing up the last chassis now. There's 99 they've all been
02:26purchased so sorry about that but they've made enough changes that it's
02:29actually its own model line and you know design wise what you can see is right up
02:34front. The horseshoe grill, the signature horseshoe grill, they made it wider. And
02:38why'd they make it wider? Because you always want to be flowing more air into
02:42the radiators into the vehicle. And you look at this thing you start to see this
02:45hole sort of all over the place. These actually help channel hot air out from
02:49under the wheel well. It's all kinds of little holes in the body that's just
02:53trying to get pressure out of the wheel well so that it reduces lift. The
02:58biggest visual difference I think between the Mistral and the Chiron is on
03:03the side. That big usually two-tone color C that kind of is the signature of the
03:08Chiron. It's been well shrank quite a bit and you can see that now it's just this
03:13little C that's feeding the air to intake here. And you can also see the door
03:17handle is actually part of the aero package which is super cool. Out back you
03:22have x-shaped taillights kind of like the Bugatti Belede. Not only do they look cool
03:27here but they're quite functional because there's negative space between
03:29the various sides of the X. It's like letting hot air come off the tires, come
03:34off the engine, come off the brakes, stuff like that. Also one of my favorite parts
03:39of this car besides literally having no roof is that massive, massive funky shaped
03:45tailpipe. Just one more thing before we get going. Take a look at these intakes
03:51here. These are functional air intakes that are pulling in fresh air right past
03:56your ear right into the air boxes. The intake plenum is right on top of the
04:01engine and right into the intercooler which is super cool. And then the last
04:04thing I should point out that's really neat. Victoria's brother Rembrandt was a
04:08sculptor. He did this famous elephant reared up on its hind legs sculpture. There's a
04:13miniature one stuck in the shifter. And again you can do whatever you want and as
04:17Akam the head of design said you could do your you know your wife, your kids, your dog,
04:21your own elephant. So think about that.
04:31Before we get to how the Bugatti Mistral drives, meet this guy. This is Andy
04:36Wallace. For me this is kind of more of a treat than the car. I've been I've been
04:39reading about you since the McLaren F1. Oh right. Yeah you did something pretty
04:46pretty crazy in that. Do you know what I'm probably the luckiest person in the
04:50world. I get to drive all these amazing cars. Yeah but you went, this is big news
04:56back in like the mid 90s, you went 241 miles an hour in the McLaren F1. Yes and
05:02that kind of started it all off really. Yeah and I never really set out to do
05:06world speed records. Yeah but if you're standing in the wrong place at the right
05:10time. Yeah. I've been lucky. Very lucky. And then before that you were just telling
05:15me you won a little race called Le Mans in a silk-cut Jag. That's it. And so but you had a
05:21lot of practice before the the chicanes on the Moulin Strait going a lot faster or
05:26going faster than 241. Yes yeah. Back in those days it was right on the
05:32ragged edge for tires. So it was a very interesting period. And so you're saying
05:37you're close to 250 miles an hour on the on the Moulin Strait? Yeah probably just a
05:41little bit shy but of course it's middle of the night dark and raining. Yeah. And
05:46you're still trying to do those speeds. I was 27 in those days so very small
05:51imagination. Right right right. Well anyway real treat and you've been kind of
05:56sitting passenger for Bugatti kind of since the 16-cylinder came out right? Yeah
06:01I've been about 15 years with Bugatti and it's yeah sometimes sitting in the
06:05wrong seat. Yeah. Quite often sitting in the proper seat. Yes because you hold a
06:10number of speed records for production cars. Let's see if I got this right. So
06:13you did do the the Veyron Supersport. Actually I didn't do the Veyron. That was
06:17my colleague Pierre Henri Raffanet. Ah that's Pierre. Okay. We did the Chiron Supersport 300
06:22plus. So you went 304 miles an hour. 304.7724. Gotta have the
06:27two four. Yeah okay. That was back in 2019. Okay. And then recently last
06:33November in the Mistral 282.04 miles an hour. In a car just like this with no
06:40roof off. Exactly. That's wild. I mean that's that's just absolutely wild. And
06:44we're not gonna go 282 miles an hour today even though we know the car can do
06:48it. Thank goodness. But we're on this lovely French country road near the factory
06:55in most time. We were talking and one of the things that never I think gets
06:59addressed with with Bugatti's and you know Chiron's and Mistral's and all this
07:03is they're really good luxury cars. Like this is really pleasant. It's a nice car to
07:09drive slow. Everything you just said is absolutely correct but I think especially
07:13nowadays you can build a fast car with lots of power but to actually make it as
07:19refined. Easy to drive. That's a lot more difficult to do.
07:30I'm not really getting on it too much but the craziest thing and I hope you can hear
07:34this. The eight liter quad turbo steam plant behind my head. It's just outrageous.
07:43the noises it makes. Especially when those like it's gonna be four wastegates
07:49are dumping out. How much boost is it? You said it was 36 pounds of boost or
07:56something. It's 2.85 bar. Now times 14.7 but yeah so a ton of boost. A ton of absolute ton of boost.
08:07Here's a nice straight away.
08:15You do have a sensation of speed. It is obviously a ridiculously quick car but
08:20there's a there's more a sensation of like stability and control and smoothness that is absent even from
08:29like really quick EVs. They don't have the sophistication and the suspension that this car has. I mean
08:36it's just it's it it's it's odd. I mean it really feels like it's tracked like roller coasters have
08:41that. It is. You're right. You'll notice there's there's not much body roll or pitch change. The car
08:48feels planted at all times. Also of course because of the very high top speeds of all of the Bugattas
08:55the gearing is very long. So there is a potential to have a lot of turbo lag. Right. Which could create
09:04an issue. So to solve that problem the turbochargers turbochargers in two stages and below
09:113,800 rpm two are blanked off. So this forces all the exhaust gases through the two that are open.
09:18Then at 3,800 we crack open the other two. And the reason that you need four is just purely from a volume angle.
09:26You're consuming a thousand liters of air per second for combustion at 7,000 rpm.
09:33So I love those numbers. Everything about this car with numbers is crazy.
09:37I don't know what a thousand liters of air is but it sounds like a lot. It's a lot.
09:41Yeah. But the result from that is that actually at 2,250 you can already get full torque.
09:50And that holds all the way through to 6,000 rpm. Yeah. And peak torque by the way is nearly
09:561,200 pound-feet. And again you know the numbers on this car you know 0 to 60 is going to be like
10:03low two seconds. A quarter mile will be in the ninth probably.
10:08Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.
10:18Yeah. Just another experience. And again,
10:22gearing the engine. And remember this is the last of the W16s. The next one's going to be a V. Totally
10:28different character. Totally different car. So this is really the last iteration of you know Ferdinand
10:34PX fever dream of making this quad turbo compact 8 liter 16 cylinder.
10:43It's really like nothing else. It really is.
10:52Not only are the brakes wonderful but you also so many cars and you know I'll pick on
10:58uh another Volkswagen brand if I find close your ears Andy but like big Lamborghini V12s when you get
11:04on the brakes like they the the Revolta less so but like all the Aventadors they have big
11:10rear end waggles and this just does not do that. And again when you have a car capable of nearly 300
11:16miles an hour you don't want to move around. And I think part of that is the air brake really helps
11:21hold the rear end down. You see the wing kicks up. But yeah remarkable feat of engineering even from a
11:30short time behind the wheel you're just really aware you're driving something quite different
11:36quite special and just just unique you know it really is there's nothing else like this.
11:44With the electrification of the automobile you know we're going to find things that are
11:48that are quicker than this but they're they're missing that like extra couple layers of varnish
11:54of polish of just I don't know there's a vibe that Bugattis have and it's it's it's part of what
12:00we're talking about initially with the luxury component you know they're just this all-rounder and
12:08you know you'll have cars that will just sacrifice everything on the altar of performance and there
12:13really is no sacrifice with this car. All of this uh that you've been saying about the quality and
12:23the refinement and the stability it all comes from the beginning you've got to start off with a very
12:29very stiff chassis and you build it on it from there and so I mean particularly when you've got a
12:37a roofless car you have a lot of issues with making the chassis stiff enough. Right. So you need to
12:43that's a fundamental part of the car. And you know obviously when you don't have a roof you're losing
12:47some structural stability so you have to stiffen the chassis. Modern cars have gotten so good you
12:52don't get a lot of like cow shake and body flex even in roadsters but this I mean it feels it's a
12:57carbon tub I mean it feels as stiff as anything and also I always find like a real stiff chassis
13:02really allows the suspension to do its thing. The geometry is kind of more pure.
13:13And then it does that! Wow!
13:32It definitely goes where you put it. It's very easy to place. As you said earlier the car's happy when
13:42it's being blasted up a mountain but at the same time if you're just cruising it's a fantastic place
13:50to spend time. Yeah I mean that's that's the irony if you will or the dual nature like again you could
13:56you could just daily this for lack of a better term you could also run Pike's Peak and and probably
14:02do rather well you know. It's kind of got you know the power the turbos for the altitude
14:08the suspension to deal with the bumps it's a remarkable car. I'm impressed too bad they're all
14:15sold out otherwise I'd purchase one back in the factory for sure. And yes if you are wondering the 99
14:23missiles were built five million euros each before options and all sold so hope you got your order in early
14:31yeah what a thing wow maybe because of the open top nature but also again just kind of because of the
14:38refinement it's hard to compare it to anything just another level again it's in terms of like
14:45leathery goodness I don't I don't know what else to put it it's uh it's just a different kind of thing
14:51yeah I think also it's just how it makes you feel when you drive a car you know it's it's uh it's an
14:58event yeah makes me feel like about five and a half million bucks you know based on the exchange rate
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