Return Of The Legend

Bugatti has named a hypercar after one of its former champion race car drivers of the 1930s, Louis Chiron.

- Robert Stedman

Southeast Asia’s first Bugatti Chiron was delivered to a Singaporean private collector just before the Lunar New Year this year. The hypercar is stored in a climate-controlled facility for its owner by Wearnes Automotive, the agent for Bugatti in Singapore. This new and impressively expensive motorcar marks the first of 20 motorcars that will be delivered to customers in Asia between now and 2020.

The Singaporean owner went with a dual color paint finish of Atlantic Blue and French Racing Blue, which pays homage to the original Bugatti Chiron unveiled at the 2016 Geneva International Motor Show. To complement the two-color exterior, the owner opted for a full leather interior in the tan-and-brown Terre d’Or color scheme.

The Chiron is one of the world’s fastest, most luxurious, exclusive, and arguably most expensive hypercars ever built. To retain its exclusivity, Bugatti has declared that only 500 of these cars will ever be produced. Customers around the world have already purchased three-quarters of the planned production.

Unlike its closest competitors — the McLaren P1, LaFerrari and Porsche 918 — the Chiron is not a hybrid. Its engine is a development of the legendary Bugatti Veyron’s 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16, while the car’s gearbox is a strengthened version of the Veyron’s seven-speed twin-clutch transmission. The Chiron, it seems, was made to challenge the very limits of materials and physics.

Bugatti CEO Mr. Wolfgang Durheimer explains, “If we went with hybrid, we would have added additional weight. We would have experienced package constraints, too, because this car doesn’t have any areas where you can put additional stuff, so the styling would need to change. We will dramatically raise the bar in terms of top speed, increase the power by 25 percent, with both aerodynamics and road holding better.”