Sports day in a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport

Like all the best ideas, this one started with a question: “If you had one full day with the new Bugatti Chiron Super Sport, what would you do with it?” We percolated this, for about five minutes, then went back to Bugatti with a plan. We wanted to collect it from the factory in Molsheim, point it north, cross the border into Germany, tear along some derestricted autobahn, then do a few laps of the Nürburgring... during a tourist session. Incredibly, they said “OK”. Which is why we find ourselves up bright and early and driving our filthy Audi Q3 rental past security and into a fairy tale world behind the Bugatti gates. Chirons are hand assembled in the crisp Atelier building, opened in 2005, but we meet our Super Sport in front of the Chateau – Ettore Bugatti’s former home, now meticulously renovated – for the full chocolate box backdrop. 

The Super Sport is the elongated and pumped-up Bugatti Chiron that Mr Wallace drove at 304.773mph in 2019 – the first series production car to break the 300mph barrier. Well... a close approximation of it at least. You see, off the back of that speedy day out at Ehra-Lessien Bugatti announced it would build 30 Chiron Super Sport 300+ special editions, visually and mechanically based on the record-breaking car (albeit limited to 273mph for tyre and life preservation purposes), with the same 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16 engine boosted by 100bhp to 1,578bhp, all 30 in the same black-with-orange-stripes livery and costing £3m each. 

On top of that there’s the mechanically identical ‘standard’ Super Sport model, as driven here – available from £2.7m in any colour you like... so long as you don’t copy the 300+ edition. As a rule for photography, black is bad. But for some reason, be it the aggression in the SS’s face or the absurdity of its longtail, this looks badass – all low and long and brooding. I spot the saddle brown leather on the inside and exhale, hard. Were it my millions being dropped, this is the spec.

Photography: Dennis Noten

For all you current Chiron owners out there getting twitchy, fret not, Bugatti will still only ever build 500 Chirons, but within that will be a mix of Chiron, Chiron Sport, Chiron Pur Sport and Super Sport. The megabucks coach-built specials – Divo, Centodieci, Voiture Noire – are on top of the 500. In fact, the standard Chiron and Chiron Sport have come to the end of their homologation run, so if you have the entry money your choice is between Pur Sport and Super Sport. Whereas the Pur Sport leans much more towards cornering, lap times and handing ability, the Super Sport is the streamliner – all about minimising drag and maximising straight-line speed. 

Differences to the cooking Chiron? At the front corners air curtains smooth the air down the side of the car, but also help draw warm air and turbulence out of the front wheelarch. At big speeds the pressure build-up in the arch is intense, with nowhere to go it would find its way under the car and create lift – hence the vents behind the arch and holes punched in the top of it – a nod to the EB110 Super Sport. 

At the back the bodywork is extended by 250mm to help keep the laminar flow attached for longer and reduce aerodynamic stall by 40 per cent. Translated into TG: to make it as slippery as a baby-oiled octopus in a bath full of baby oil. Gone is the horizontal bank of four exhausts, replaced with two wide-set double stacks leaving space for a much larger central diffuser. That allows the car to stay stuck to the road even with the wing fully retracted in Top Speed mode, accessed via the second key stored down by your left thigh. Remove it, insert it then twist it when you’re parked up and the car will assess whether you’re up to it – slamming the ride height, retracting underbody fins to bleed downforce from the front and performing a series of other safety checks. Tyres more than two years old? Access denied. Remember, any downforce created under the car is done so without a drag penalty, unlike sticking something into the airflow on the top surface of the car, which plays perfectly into the Super Sport’s high-speed aspirations. 

Speaking of which, I hear the autobahn calling, but not before Andy has given me a full walkaround of the car while spouting a handful of outrageous titbits – pure notebook gold. Like the fact that the fuel tank would drain itself in 6mins 50secs if you could find anywhere on earth expansive enough to keep it pinned, or that at 304mph the bespoke, internally strengthened Cup 2 tyres experience a seven-tonne tearing force. That’s equivalent to stripping the rubber off the rim, lashing a chain around and hanging three and a half Chirons from it. Jaw sufficiently slackened; we roll out. 

Before the fireworks, some normality for the far-from-normal Super Sport to deal with. Stuff like roundabouts, traffic jams and baffling European one-way systems with added tram. Thing is, it’s all ridiculously easy and this is the stuff that sets Bugatti apart – the engineering, the attention to detail that goes into making something this stable at unthinkable speeds capable of trickling along in traffic. Andy tells me about a Chiron owner who’s put 50,000 miles on theirs already and I can’t tell you how happy this makes me, because this is a car so ridiculously usable that it begs to be driven regularly.

It also begs to be driven hard. We’re on the A1 autobahn now, just past the magical signpost, but heavy traffic is limiting us to a 120mph cruise. It’s bonkers how in its comfort zone this car is, we’re barely tickling its potential but already steaming along, eyes scanning the horizon for a gap big enough to unleash the power station behind me. It’s a state of extreme tension: partly because I’m not sure what’s going to happen when I bury my right foot, partly because the stack of dials down the dash record maximum power deployed, max speed reached and max rpm so there’s no hiding, and partly because despite being alongside for insurance purposes, Andy Wallace is egging me on. “Go on, 220mph has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?” I do Andy, but so does not being pureed on impact with an erratically driven HGV. 

And then the sea parts, the road straightens, and I try to shove the throttle through the bulkhead. A bassline like rolling thunder, a hiss of building boost, several other noises I can’t repeat because this is a family website and we’re smashing down the outside lane in a way that’s tricky to process. I can’t look down to check my speed, so make a pact with myself to keep it pinned until the next curve starts to look like a hairpin, and then back off. As adrenalin rushes go, it beats bungee jumps and rollercoasters because it feels raw and real and totally illegal... but somehow it’s not. And then I remember to start breathing again. We’ve used 1,615PS (1,593bhp, so actually created power) and hit 211mph at 6,900rpm... that’ll do. We’ve also, not entirely voluntarily, taken a corner at 190mph, which was a lot less dramatic than it sounds.

Honestly though, you could do it too. Your grandparents could, given enough space. This car turns superhuman feats into low-hanging fruit. The new wave of electric hypercars – including the Chiron’s new room-mate, the Rimac Nevera – might have it covered off the line, but the Super Sport’s roll-on performance, the way it scoots from 100mph to 200mph, is just brutal. It feels more exciting too, with mechanical processes you can feel, hear and smell. This W16 is the heart and soul of the car, and the most remarkable engine I’ve ever had the privilege of operating. Here’s praying that Mate Rimac finds a home for it, or a derivative of it, in more Bugattis to come. 

Autobahn, big tick. Time for a bit of lappage, but as the Nürburgring hoves into view, it begins to rain with enthusiasm. Apparently this is normal. Apparently, someone turning up to a Touristenfahrten in a Bugatti in a torrential downpour is not. The supercar spotters are out in force – one who looks remarkably like Shrek simply attaches himself to us for the next three hours. Andy looks worried, probably because I’m mildly oblivious to the jeopardy we’re about to embrace, but we approach the barrier anyway and go through a few pre-flight checks: “We want at least 30˚C tyre temp or they simply won’t work... and don’t do anything stupid.” 

Still unaware of quite what the conditions mean I select track mode, which loosens the ESP, and set off with two laps of Nürburgring experience (five years ago in a Megane RS, in the dry) under my belt and blind optimism in my heart. Two corners in and Andy doesn’t even bother asking me to switch the ESP back on, he simply leans over and turns the dial mode back to ‘Autobahn’. I take this as a sign things might be hairier than first anticipated. 

I’d love to tell you about the Super Sport’s on-limit handling, how it trades some ultimate cornering speed to the Pur Sport, but still equips itself well, but the reality is I’m tiptoeing around. This is now a battle for survival – to not get overtaken by anything, I have Bugatti’s reputation to uphold – but mainly to keep us pointing in the right direction and off the phone to the insurers. To give you an idea of the grip levels out there, I have a protracted 15 corner ding-dong with a BMW 320td Compact.

The dramatic incident in the second paragraph? I manage to gather it up, just about, but not without liquifying my bowels and asking for my mum, although to be totally honest it’s a bit of a blur. I remember picturing the headline in tomorrow’s papers though: BBC TOP GEAR BINS THE WORLD’S FASTEST CAR AT WORLD’S SCARIEST (AND WETTEST) RACETRACK! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? But I make it back to the pits unscathed and offer to swap seats with Andy, so he can show us how it’s really done. He point blank refuses. We sit in the car park waiting for the rain to turn from ‘biblical’ to merely ‘bannisters’ and then he agrees to an exploratory lap. It’s faster than mine, but still cautious with a couple of wobbles. You see, it wasn’t all lack of talent. 

What a day, what a car and at the risk of sounding like an old fart, compelling evidence that pure electric has a long way to go before it brings the all-round drama of a socking great engine... and the Chiron lump remains the daddy of them all. RIP petrol, your light might be dwindling but you’re still at the top of your game.