The Bugatti Chiron is better than the Veyron in every way; the Chiron is faster, more powerful, and even better looking than its predecessor. But there’s a reason why the new car can’t match the old.
The Chiron has made absolutely huge leaps on from the Veyron, particularly if you compare it to the original Bugatti Veyron 16.4, as that car made its way into production in the heady pre-recession days of 2005.
The Chiron is eight miles an hour faster than the original Veyron. The Chiron makes nearly 500 more horsepower and it even has a higher price tag, too. Everything the Veyron does, the Chiron does better.
But the problem is that these are incremental advances. They are little steps in performance. Everyone understands now, over a decade since the modern incarnation of Bugatti first made deliveries to the public, that the company is capable of this kind of performance. The Chiron’s speed is evolutionary.
The original Veyron was a revolution. People simply could not believe the speed of the thing, or that the massive corporate structure of Volkswagen Group could pull it off. The car had a number of very public failures leading up to its launch, and the way the car monstered every performance metric of every other production car in history blew the automotive world’s mind.
I have seen a Veyron undergoing an engine-out service. They entire back half of the car comes apart. It looks like part of an Apollo module. It looks like nothing that ever came before it.
This is the problem with the Chiron; it is expected. It might be better than the Veyron, it might beat its speed records, but it is more of the same when its predecessor was anything but.
Photo Credits: Bugatti
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