The Grand Tour’s Drive Tribe team finally reviewed the Bugatti Chiron with their team gracing us with a preview of the Chiron hitting 200 MPH in just 16 seconds.
When it comes to the Bugatti Chiron, in terms of production cars, none can top the spec sheet for power and performance that V.W. has bestowed upon this titan among mere mortals. It looks like the team over at Drive Tribe has finished testing the Chiron and is in the middle of getting the review ready for the world to enjoy. In the meantime they’ve whet our appetite with a truly amazing video. According to DriveTribe earlier today (Mar. 24, 2017) the Bugatti Chiron can hit 200 MPH in just 16 seconds. Check out the un-official testing video below!
Any armchair car enthusiast will know that cars with this monstrous amount of power will make the climb to 200 MPH look like piece of cake. With all that raw power, wind resistance is definitely an issue but nothing that brute force can’t overcome. From 200 MPH on it’s a delicate balancing game of keeping the car on the road while at the same time making sure that the shape of the car doesn’t get in the way of building up speed. Simply put, the force thanks to drag increases dramatically with the square of the speed of the moving object. The faster something goes, the more drag it makes thus you need more power to overcome that drag.
On paper, the specs of the Bugatti Chiron are nothing short of amazing. The Chiron makes 1500 HP and 1180 lb-ft thanks to its quad-turbocharged 8.0-liter 16-cylinder engine. Paired to that monstrous motor is a 7-speed dual clutch automatic transmission. For the meantime a speed governor makes sure things stay “under control” with a top speed of 261 MPH but with that limiter lifted we can expect to see the Chiron graze 288 MPH when they find a test driver brave enough to strap himself inside.
From this video it looks like Bugatti has all but mastered the art of wind management. To put that 16 second figure in perspective according to Road and Track in their own independent testing it took such supercars like the Lamborghini Murcielago, 50 seconds, more than twice as long to reach just 190 MPH. The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren takes 47.2 seconds, the Ligenfelter C6 Corvette takes 26.5 seconds, the old Veyron takes 24.2 seconds and even Hennessey’s Venom 1000TT takes 20.3 seconds to reach 200 MPH. It should be noted that in order to shave off four seconds from its predecessor the Chiron requires an additional 500 HP.
[…] Top Gear dropped their Bugatti Chiron acceleration teaser last week, tuners with arguably quicker cars have been matching up their speedos to see just how […]