Bugatti has a pleasant surprise for all buyers of the Chiron Super Sport hypercar armed with a W16: the deliveries will begin later this summer, rather than in early 2022. To make sure everything goes smoothly, however, the company has now taken the car to the test track and drives it at 440 km/h (273 mph).
The Super Sport series boasts 1,600 metric horsepower (1,578 hp / 1,177 kW) and 1,600 Nm (1,180 lb-ft) of torque. It costs €3.2 million and above and counts among the fastest production vehicles in the world. Unsurprisingly, the manufacturer wants to ensure its compliance to the standards. The one-off La Voiture Noire, for example, had also been exhaustively tested prior to delivery.
The Super Sport actually has a built-in electronic speed limiter – according to Bugatti, it would have been able to hit 500 km/h (310 mph) otherwise. As such, the ultimate goal of the testing routine is not to prove its capability to reach its limits, but to ensure that is handles and responds well, even at extreme accelerations. For this purpose, the test crew fitted it with around 100 telemetry sensors in addition to the existing ones.
With each track run, the crew tunes the steering, the chassis and the aerodynamic kit a little bit, and then check the engine and transmission for possible issues. Then they discuss the optimum parameters. The goal is to make the track weapon ‘uncompromisingly safe’ at its top speed, the company claims.
The production run remains to be announced, but it is now official that the Super Sport batch will constitute a part of the total 500 Chirons planned for production. The company reported having only 100 unsold cars in February 2020, so the number should not exceed a few dozen now.