The Bugatti Chiron Super Sport is the Most Over-Engineered Car You Can Buy (POV Drive Review)
Hey crew. I’ve get the, uh, I forgot. I don’t yet have the key to this Bugatti Chiron Super Sport, but I will, because we’re gonna take it for a drive. Can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth. But first, let’s check out how it looks on the inside and outside. Up front, everything flows out of the classic Bugatti grille with the red plaque above the number 16, denoting the number of cylinders at our disposal, wild as that is to say. This one wears a two-tone of metallic silver on exposed blue carbon fiber paint
job. It’s called Royal Blue Carbon and it costs $222,000, or the starting price of a Lamborghini Huracan EVO. We have LED projector headlights and these quad LED DRLs on each side. Functional corner vents to cool the front brakes and tires. These nine holes as the fender vents that are a styling trait borrowed from the Bugatti EB110 SS. The wheels: 20” front, 21” rear, wrapped up in Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires. And they’re not just Cup 2 tires, they’re actually reinforced tires that can handle the speeds that this car can achieve, 273 miles per hour.
They’re 285 section front and 355 section rear. From within those wheels, let’s see the 8 caliper, 8-piston calipers up front clamping on the
standard Chiron. That is to give it reduced drag. At the back is an LED taillight bar that spans the whole rear end. Above that is an adjusting wing that functions both as an air brake and then comes on down to reduce drag. Down lower is a larger diffuser on the Super Sport compared to the standard Chiron and because of that, they had to stack the rear tailpipes. So there are two rows of two and all four are functional, of course. You’re looking at the engine. This is about as close as you can get to it.
The W16 motor. And this fin, the spine running all the way through. The Chiron is already one of the most eye catching vehicles in the road and the Super Sport being longer, more elegant, more purposeful, just grabs that much more attention. Let’s look at the interior. Opening up and looking inside at this Lake Blue/Grigio leather interior with beautiful gray contrast stitching and quilting in the seats. Two spots for your racing harness to go. There are power adjustable seats on carbon fiber bases. 3 position memory. That slot right there is for the speed key to go.
That unlocks all the ability to hit 273 miles per hour. Here in the doors, it’s a mix of the matte carbon fiber, gray leather, more matte carbon fiber down low and aluminum. Even the door pulls feel just exquisite. The dampening on them is incredible. Sliding in. You do definitely have to ease yourself into the seat because your head has to duck with the low roof line and then your body has to contort over the strong bolsters. Door closes with a nice thud. Put it in Accessory mode. Hear those fans come on. We’ve got the two
digital displays surrounding the one analog speedometer with a max speed of 300. That you don’t see every day and that’s 300 miles per hour, not KPH. Leather wrapping up top mingles with matte carbon fiber trim. These dials here are for your HVAC controls and just the action of each of them feel so good. So tactile and wonderful. There’s some storage under here and then here is your gear selection. Leather here with stitching. Little storage there. And then along the spine, there’s the C light. On the passenger side, we have leather. Glove box there. The seats
feel wonderful. There’s the matte carbon fiber. Leather at 9 and 3, stitching on the inside. Launch control is here. Stitched leather for your airbag cover. Drive mode selection on the left. Start-Stop on the right. Paddles on the back are not huge, but the action feels really solid. Visibility? Great out the front glass. Good on the sides and then yeah, those thick pillars and the spine that bisects the rear glass hinder rear outward visibility. Hopefully, people are looking out for you because you may not see them. Headroom is excellent to report. Plenty of it. The cabin
as a whole has just wonderful material quality. The leather is supple. The matte carbon fiber trim is beautiful and all the actions of the dials and controls is so very satisfying. I’m excited. Let’s take the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport for a drive. All right, let’s fire it up. It’s the most expensive startup of my life. And I am joined by professional racing driver Jamie Morrow. -Hi. -Hi, Jamie. -How’s it going? -It’s going very well today. -Good. -Very, very well. -We have EB, which is our kind of, um, most usable mode. We have a Lift mode
where we lift the front of the car, which we will use today as well. and then we have Autobahn and Handling. Autobahn for high speed efficiency if we were on the German Autobahn or something similar. Big miles at, at a high cruising speed. It’s very efficient, puts pinch on the vehicle and the Handling mode is our more track orientated. -Got it. And we’re gonna be cruising today, so it’s Bugatti mode for us so I’ll click over right. Put us into Drive. And away we go. This is wild because I’ve moved not 20 feet and I
can already sense. Yeah, it’s very warm today. I can already sense the incredible power at the disposal of my right foot. Just, I mean, we’re talking, breathing on the throttle. And it’s like, let’s go! Cobblestone driveway to start and we have a roster of people watching it leave. So let’s talk about the powertrain. What a thing. 8 liters of displacement. A W16 engine. Effectively, two V8s just patched up next to one another. The output: 1,578 horsepower. I wanna say that again. 1,578 horsepower. That’s a better way of saying that, and 1,180 pound-feet of torque. That
is routed through a 7-speed dual clutch automatic gearbox to all four tires. Does that ever get old? Just like saying those numbers. -It doesn’t, no, and the car is just a… a load of numbers. You know, everything you look at, whether it’s the, the amount of cooling we’re pumping around, the amount of radiators, the amount of power, the torque, etcetera, etcetera. It just throws numbers at you. It’s. -And I forgot one important number. Four turbochargers. -Four turbochargers. -Four. -And four large turbochargers, so different from the philosophy we used on Veyron, -where we had low and
high pressure. -Right. -This is four big ones. -I, I, I’m excited. I’m very excited and the traffic couldn’t clear fast enough. Back in motion momentarily and just a beautiful look at Malibu as we coast on down to PCH. I’ve had a lot of fun talking with Jamie for the last, you know, 15 miles or so to get us out here to when traffic is finally clear. But now we can talk a bit more about the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport’s driving experience at these lower speeds. It’s just… so pleasant. It is, and I’m shocked by that.
It’s, it’s quite pleasant to drive. Now, let me clarify something. This is not a true luxury car driving experience in the way that you don’t want to feel the road in a luxury car. In a luxury car, like a Bentley or a Rolls-Royce, they pride themselves on you being detached from the sense of the road imperfections. That’s not the case here with the Chiron Super Sport. I can feel the bumps and the grooves and the divots, but that keeps me connected to the car and yet, though I feel them, the suspension is still extremely well
sorted. The dampening is pleasant. I go over those bumps and I’m not disrupted. I’m not jostled too much in the seat. The seats themselves are ergonomic and they hold me well in place. My driving position, where my hands lay, I can rest my elbow on this center console or here on the armrest. We’re just cruising along. I mentioned we have all the access to the power at our disposal. All it takes is a brush of your right foot and you just sort of uncork two things. One, the sound. The sound gets unleashed. And two, after
you wait for the bit of turbo lag that is there and a downshift or two to happen, then you just unfurl all of that power. And because it’s an all-wheel drive vehicle, even if you completely match your foot, it can get the power to the ground, which is wild when you’ve got 1500 horsepower at your disposal. Now the dual clutch automatic gearbox, it’s different from a torque converter automatic in the smoothness factor. When you get to low speeds, there is a little bit of clunkiness there, at least in the first couple gears, and then it
evens out. But at higher speeds, it’s very smooth in operation. If you have a lead foot, you’re gonna still run into problems because you’ll end up breaking the speed limit everywhere. But if you have that sensitivity, you can kind of just ease into the throttle and be fully within the car and the speed limits. This car is going to be center stage at Pebble Beach. Pebble Beach Concours during Monterey Car Week and so we can’t afford any little incidents. I can’t launch the car, unfortunately, so there’s not gonna be a 0-60 test, but I’m still
going to give you all that I can about the driving experience at modest speeds, because I’ll tell you what, even at modest speeds, you can understand the engineering that went into this vehicle and how extensive they went with every aspect of the car, from the suspension to the powertrain, to the gearbox, all of these elements. They’re all just so well sorted. And we’ve been driving around in, as I said, the Bugatti drive mode, but also in the Normal powertrain setting, you can click over right to go into Sport powertrain and that instantly one, keeps us
out of the higher gears. Downshifts us, but also just makes that throttle response even more sensitive, so you just… I just, I love the turbos. I love the sound of the turbochargers, the air intake. The blow off valve. Words and images fail me. It’s just the, the taste and the G-force. That one was enough to feel the force pressing me hard into the seat back. And like the taste, was delicious. I do love tunnels. Let’s see if we can hear something. There’s so many noises here competing for your attention. This reminds me of the last
time I drove the Chiron 6 years ago, but I couldn’t, at the time, just process all the things going on. You have the induction noise, you have the turbocharger spooling. You’ve got the 16 cylinders, the lifters, everything is just going listen to me, listen to me! And of course the exhaust sound, which is meaty, without being overdone. I don’t know how else would you expect 16 cylinders to sound. It doesn’t quite sound like two V8s. It’s, it’s something more. Something more refined. All right, it’s finally time for the world-famous horn test followed by a turning
radius test. Here we go. That sounds elegant. That sounds expensive. That’s an expensive sounding horn and now we’ll crank it. Four driven wheels does make for a wider turning radius. Not horrible, but you may have to, uh, do a correction if you’re in a tight parking lot. And the turn signal sound? Someone gently tapping at your door. Excuse me. I have a $4.3 million hypercar here for you. Now, we are not pushing the Chiron Super Sport in any way today. But even with a little bit of effort in a corner, I can have a fair
sense of what is going on with the tires. The grip level available is, is far, far beyond anything I’m, I’m going to accomplish on a public road. The sensitivity through the rack is excellent. The turn in is quick and the feedback is present. And I wondered about that too, because I know that they calibrated the steering for the Super Sport for this car being able to achieve 273 miles per hour and you not to over correct something at those high speeds, which could be a catastrophic result. But Jamie reminded me that this is a variable
ratio rack, so it’s speed-sensitive in that as those higher speeds build, it’s going to require more effort to actually turn the wheels, whereas at these lower speeds and in a more canyon carving situation, it’s going to sort of dart in, as much as you can say a 4,500 pound car darts. It is going to dart in and the steering feel is excellent. And a Corvette that’s on and over there on the other side of the road. Not only the sensitivity, but the weight to the steering is just ideal. It is not over boosted in any
way. It feels appropriate for the amount of effort I’m giving the rack to how much I’m getting back through the wheel in the corner. The brakes are also very nice, very progressive. They slow the car appropriately based on the amount of effort you push against the pedal. The blow off noise is phenomenal. What a wonderful concert of noises, this car. And I’ll tell you what, it’s 4,500 pounds, but because of the all-wheel drive system and because of how refined the powertrain and, see if I can jump in front of this person. Can I? As if,
could I jump in front of this person? Um, yes. I have more than have the ability to. It’s so refined that the weight transfer is incredibly progressive, that you just don’t have the sense that I’m driving a vehicle that is 1500 pounds more than your average Super car. It just, it’s. It’s so disguised by all of the precision in the driving dynamics. And I realize at this point it may seem like I’m an advertisement for the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport, but lemme tell you friends, that it’s easy to be an internet commenter and say: you
have no idea, or they bought you. This, that or the other thing, until you drive this car and you come away with one very clear thing. And that is that this is, as tested, I’ll say it again, $4.3 million and it feels it. It feels it in the way the car drives. What I was saying to Jamie off camera earlier is that you drive a very, very good car and then you hop in this and you go: Wow. Was it something about that other very good car that was unfinished? And the answer is probably not.
It’s just that they didn’t have the money to then go to that 11th degree to make it as close to perfection as this car is. It’s just, everything is just tightened and dialed to this level that is not within the budget of regular cars. It’s palpable. You feel that as you’re driving the car. And that is a pretty darn good advertisement if I do say so myself, but it’s real. This is real, guys. I’m driving this car and it feels as expensive as it costs. All right. Let’s get into the wrap up for the Bugatti
Chiron Super Sport. The price for the standard, if you can even say that, Chiron is $3.3 million. The Super Sport comes in at $3.9 million and this one as tested, I’m gonna say it for probably the fourth or fifth time, is $4.3 million bucks. What would you compare it to? The field is very small and everything’s objectionable. Like, I could just say the, the, the Ferrari Daytona SP3 and someone is gonna say: well, it doesn’t make nearly the same power. Yeah, 829 horsepower isn’t nearly the same as 1578 in this car, but the price is
getting close, $2.2 million for that one. The 0-60 is also close, 2.6 seconds. The top speed, nowhere in the same ballpark, 211 miles per hour. Another one you might consider, the Koenigsegg Regera. That one is $1.9 million. It does make 1500 horsepower. It gets to 60 in the same as the SP3, 2.6 seconds and the top speed is 255 miles per hour. Still off the pace of the 273 for the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport. -Are you impressed now, Jamie? – I am, very impressed. -I told him I would remember the specs. And now I’ve gotta
say, if you’ve got $2+ million, your buying criteria are so different than the average consumer. The average consumer is gonna say: Well, this makes more power, or I like how this one looks or this, that, or the other thing. If you have that kind of money to spend on a car, then it’s not just: I want this car because it’s better, it’s: I want this car because I want it. And so if you have that kind of money, you could probably buy, probably buy all three of the cars I just mentioned. The reason you might
want to spend your money on the Chiron Super Sport is because what I said up until now, it is so over engineered that it’s palpable. You feel that from every aspect of the way this car drives, looks, performs. All the switch gears, everything just has this finesse to it that says it’s worth it. And though I have not been able to experience this car anywhere close to the performance threshold, a little bit that I’ve tasted is enough to satisfy my knowledge and curiosity of what that might be like. I’m happy behind the wheel of the
Chiron Super Sport for any length of time at any speed. If you guys enjoyed this POV drive review, please like, comment and share the video. Subscribe to the channel, hit that bell to get notified, and I’ll see you next time. Captions by Nicosubs.
