There will soon apparently come a time that a Bugatti will be capable of breaching the 500 km/h barrier.
Think Bugatti and likely the first thing that comes to everyone’s mind is speed. This is after all the company that made its name in this modern era as being the V-Max king, all the way from its Veyron blasting its way into the record books by breaching the 400 km/h barrier all the way back in 2005.
So it was pretty intriguing to learn that earlier this decade, Bugatti had previously officially announced for the company to begin stepping away from its lofty top speed pursuits…
Though as evidenced from its Mistral recently clinching the crown as the fastest open-top production car in the world, it seems that the Molsheim marque ain’t really all that done weaning off the teat of top speed yet. And in fact, it was apparently while gaining the record that its new CEO Mate Rimac had hinted that Bugatti is currently perhaps interested in breaching the 500 km/h barrier!
News of this tantalising tease was first reported by Top Gear, who caught Rimac deep in conversation with Michelin’s engineers. When asked about the exchange, the new man behind Bugatti revealed his curiosity about the limits of Michelin’s bespoke tires and just how far their bespoke rubber could go.
And just to erase any doubt of whether Rimac is aiming for the 500 km/h barrier here, he then confidently replied that he had enquired: “Can we put the ‘five’ in front of the top speed record?”
Now while 500 km/h might seem like a very big number, it actually isn’t all that far off for Bugatti at least. This is especially when considering that its Chiron Super Sport 300+ comes already tantalisingly close, with it topping out at 490.48 km/h (304.7 mph) at Ehra-Lessien back in 2019.
What more is that with Bugatti asking these sorts of questions, it is probably near certain already that the Molshiem marque already knows that its latest Tourbillon V16 hybrid hypercar (in spite of apparently being electronically limited to 455 km/h) is to be capable of becoming the world’s first production car with a 5 in front of its top speed specification.
Let’s just see then when exactly could Bugatti breach this record, and perhaps more interestingly see too if the company might be willing to tackle the 600 km/h barrier as well!
