The Bugatti Tourbillon: A V16 Hybrid Hypercar for a New Era

When a company builds the most extreme road cars in the world, its next act is always the most watched in the industry. Bugatti's answer, the Tourbillon, is the successor to the Chiron and the first true statement of the marque's new era under Mate Rimac. Rather than chase the trend toward smaller turbocharged engines, Bugatti went in the opposite direction entirely.

An Engine Against the Tide

At the heart of the Tourbillon is an all new 8.3 liter naturally aspirated V16 engine, developed with the help of Cosworth and infused with technologies drawn from Formula One. On its own it produces 1,000 horsepower and revs to 9,000 rpm. Paired with three electric motors, two on a front axle and one at the rear, the total output reaches 1,800 horsepower. An 800 volt battery gives the car more than sixty kilometers of electric only range. In an age of downsizing, Bugatti built a sixteen cylinder.

The Numbers

The performance follows from the power. The Tourbillon reaches 100 kilometers per hour in two seconds, passes 300 in under ten, and is limited to 380 kilometers per hour, or 445, roughly 276 miles per hour, with its dedicated Speed Key. Its body, shaped for downforce without a raised rear wing, sits on a monocoque of aerospace grade carbon composite, with suspension parts made lighter through 3D printing.

Named for a Watch

The car takes its name from the tourbillon, one of the most intricate complications in watchmaking, and the reference is more than poetic. The instrument cluster is built by Swiss horologists to watchmaking tolerances, entirely analogue, with more than six hundred individual components, mounted behind a fixed hub steering wheel so it is always in view. The materials around it, titanium, wood, cashmere, and sapphire, speak to Bugatti's insistence that nothing is too beautiful.

The Argument It Makes

The Tourbillon is Bugatti's case that a hypercar is defined by emotion and craft as much as by figures. It could have chased outright speed with a smaller, forced induction engine, and instead it built a naturally aspirated V16 and an analogue dashboard made by watchmakers. For the few hundred owners who will ever hold the key, that is precisely the point.