When Bugatti’s creative team got the opportunity to design a race car for the virtual world, they engineered one that could actually work in real life too. Explaining that to me was a guy wearing a Metallica tee, unsurprisingly.
Sasha Selipanov is one of the four men responsible for creating the Vision Gran Turismo Veyron concept, and probably the only VW Group employee in the world who comes to the Frankfurt Motor Show wearing a flannel shirt over a Metallica T-shirt.
He invited me over to their stand to have a better look at their beast, which seems to be the closest to a real racer of all the Virtual Concepts so far despite of course not complying with any current FIA regulations.
Not that it was ever meant to be, and a Veyron-sized car powered by a quad-turbo W16 could never do that anyway.
But compared to virtual concepts like Alpine’s or Chevrolet’s Vision Gran Turismo, Bugatti’s latest looks like a car from tomorrow, not the year 2069.
It’s also a good idea to investigate its details, because Bugatti’s next real hypercar will surface very soon, and I won’t eat meat for two weeks if the Chiron won’t feature four-segment LED headlamps on each side.
Bugatti’s team wanted to stay grounded, even on the computer screen, so the Vision GT was developed with race car specialist Dallara to make sure every scoop and wing has a function and that W16 oven gets as much cooling as mother nature allows.
The famous horseshoe is only held in place by the front splitter, so there’s nothing behind it to block the airflow. The mirrors channel air downwards while the front fenders send it to the top of the massive intake, which is hidden by the Bugatti line. The DRS system is linked to the cabin by the seam running down the roof. No rivets this time, just tinted carbon fiber. Acres of it.
By the looks of it, I would say the W16 could fit in there too. Somebody, call Williams!
Photo credit: Máté Petrány/Jalopnik
Contact the author at mate@jalopnik.com.