No one was more pleased than us when Mate Rimac - newly installed as Bugatti’s CEO - made it clear that the hypercar manufacturer’s long association with spectacular combustion engines would not cease just because it was now joined at the hip with a carmaker that had exclusively focused on EVs. As anyone who has met the man will tell you, he’s first and foremost a car fan - so when he reassured everyone that work was well underway on a ‘bonkers’ unit to replace the long-running 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16, we took him at his word.
Good that we did. Because eight years to the day since the Chiron was revealed, Bugatti has confirmed that the engine’s replacement will be a ‘V16 hybrid powertrain’. So much for downsizing, eh? For now there are no additional details on spec or output - but there hardly needs to be. Merely confirming that Bugatti will persevere with 16 petrol-burning cylinders is enough, and if anyone can be trusted to make them work with electricity, it is likely the mentalists at Rimac.
The very short press release accompanying the pictures suggests it is ‘incomparable in every detail, [and] a pure embodiment of Bugatti’s DNA, created not just for the present, or even the future – but “Pour l’éternité”.’ On the basis that this is likely the last petrol engine Bugatti will ever field (taking into account a life cycle that will probably take it beyond 2030) it might earn such that lofty description. Now, of course, it just has to live up to it.
There’s every reason to think it will. Mate Rimac suggested that a Rimac-developed engine had already been in development for two years prior to his taking over of Bugatti, meaning the V16 has had the luxury of a lengthy gestation period. Additionally, and no matter the final displacement, it has extraordinary and improbable vastness built in - very few cars have ever boasted two banks of eight cylinders on a common crankshaft. There was the vanishing rare Cizeta-Moroder V16T, of course, and Cadillac had a go back in the ’30s, but otherwise it has generally been limited to race cars and prototypes - most famously in the Rolls-Royce 100EX. So whatever the Chiron’s replacement looks like (we’ll find that out when it’s fully revealed in June) its new engine virtually guarantees it pre-eminence - even among equally silly hypercars.