Attention all petrolheads! The Chiron replacement has been teased for the very first time by none other than Bugatti-Rimac’s CEO Mate Rimac, who took to Instagram to release a small preview of the upcoming hypercar. Frustratingly, all we can barely see is the silhouette of the yet-unnamed model hidden under a thin veil. Unless you’re a customer, you’ll have to wait till June 2024, when the hypercar will be revealed to the general public. Judging by the shape of the hypercar under the wrap, it might preserve some of the bodylines and styling elements of the Chiron. Interestingly, Bugatti has done a great job at hiding just about all the details of its next high-performance automobile till now. However, Mate Rimac and Bugatti did give away some interesting information before the hypercar is officially unveiled.
It was a sad day for all automotive enthusiasts when Bugatti announced that it would discontinue the monstrous 8.0-liter quad-turbo W16 engine once the last Chiron variant rolls off its factory floor. Everyone expected the beastly 16-cylinder powertrain to be replaced by a downsized engine, probably a hybridized V8, for Chiron’s upcoming successor, thanks to the ever-tightening emission regulations. Well, we all couldn’t have been more wrong. The French automaker has announced that its next hypercar will also feature a 16-cylinder unit, only this time in a V configuration instead of the previous W layout of the cylinders. It’s absolutely crazy that Bugatti has been able to pull it off, considering the rest of the automotive industry has been forced to downsize. But, interestingly, Bugatti was the first automaker in history to put a V16 engine in a production car almost a century ago.
A week ago, Mate Rimac uploaded a few pictures of early prototype V16s being developed for the soon-to-be-launched Bugatti, which reveals some interesting details. It has a cross-plane crankshaft. Furthermore, the French automaker also released a 25-second video of the V16 engine, in which you can hear the symphony of it revving. The video tells us that the V16 will have a carbon fiber intake manifold and feature four throttle bodies feeding the 16 cylinders.
The specifications are yet to be revealed, but some rumors suggest that the hybrid V16 engine will be capable of producing up to 2000 horsepower. There are also reports that the engine has been developed by Cosworth, which also developed the engines for the Aston Martin Valkyrie, Gordon Murray T.50, and the T.33. Furthermore, unverified sources claim the hypercar might have a starting price north of $5 million, while the production will be limited to just 250 units. It should hardly be a surprise that most of those build slots have already been snapped up.
