9 Astonishing Facts About The Bugatti Chiron

As with the old Veyron, the Chiron - revealed yesterday at the Geneva motor show - is a technological marvel that brings with it all sorts of bonkers facts, stats and superlatives. Here are a few of our favourites...
9 Astonishing Facts About The Bugatti Chiron

It has a ridiculous hunger for air

9 Astonishing Facts About The Bugatti Chiron

Naturally, having an 8.0-litre engine with no less than four turbochargers means that the Chiron does require quite a bit of air. According to Bugatti, 60,000 litres of oxygen is sent through the engine per minute of operation.

It has more radiators than your house

9 Astonishing Facts About The Bugatti Chiron

Like the Veyron, the Chiron packs a total of 10 radiators. Nothing new then, but where it gets interesting is when you look at the sheer amount of water that’s pumped through the cooling system.

The high-temperature cooling loop - which consists of one main and two auxiliary radiators - has 37 litres of water pumped through it every three seconds. In all, the coolant pump circulates 800 litres of water through the engine every minute.

The active surface area of the catalytic converters is massive

9 Astonishing Facts About The Bugatti Chiron

230,266 square metres, apparently. Or if you prefer to measure things in the classic unit of football pitches, we’re talking 30. That’s because the Chiron has six catalytic converters, and the two main ones are each six times as large as the cat you’d find on a regular “medium-sized” car. Much of the exhaust is made from titanium, because stainless steel is a bit too common.

It has the longest light conductor ever fitted to a car

9 Astonishing Facts About The Bugatti Chiron

See that fancy ‘C-bar’ light strip that starts at the top of the windscreen and loops back behind the passengers? Not only is it housed in a single piece of machined aluminium, it’s also the longest light conductor that’s ever been fitted to a car. Oh, and if you find it too bright, it’s dimmable too. Handy, no?

It has the biggest clutch ever fitted to a passenger car

9 Astonishing Facts About The Bugatti Chiron

1179lb ft is a hell of a lot of torque for the gearbox to take, so it’s no surprise that the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission is a bespoke, Bugatti-developed unit. And of course, it has its own superlative: it contains the largest clutch of any car.

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The monocoque of the Chiron is a special bit of kit. It’s made entirely from carbonfibre and on its own takes four weeks to make. It’s 8kg lighter than the Veyron’s monocoque, and is exceptionally rigid. Bugatti says that the Chiron “reaches a torsional rigidity of 50,000 Nm per degree and a flexural rigidity of about 0.25 mm per tonne” - and if you’ve no idea what that means, all you need to know is that it’s apparently comparable to an LMP1 endurance racer in rigidity terms.

The airbags sit in a carbonfibre housing

9 Astonishing Facts About The Bugatti Chiron

If you smack your €2.4 million (£1.9 million) Chiron into a wall, you’re likely to be quite upset. But really, you should be intrigued by what the airbags have just done. That’s because the seat airbags and passenger side airbag on the Chiron are the first in the world that are designed to blast through carbonfibre housings.

It went through hella testing

9 Astonishing Facts About The Bugatti Chiron

During development, Chiron test cars have spent a combined 300 hours in the wind tunnel, clocked over 300,000 miles and munched through 200 sets of tyres. Bugatti says that it had to develop a new test bench for the 8.0-litre engine, as existing test equipment wasn’t able to apply big enough loads for the W16.

A radiator was tilted to make it more practical

9 Astonishing Facts About The Bugatti Chiron

You don’t expect something from Bugatti to be particularly practical, but in the Chiron you can actually stuff a suitcase that’s “the size of a cabin trolley approved for air travel” in the frunk, on the off chance you could ever bring yourself to trust an airport valet with your multi-million Euro Bugatti. The interesting part is how they’ve managed to do that. That extra frunk room is thanks to one of the Chiron’s 10 radiators being mounted at an inclined position, which as well as adding more luggage space, actually gives a larger cooling surface.

Click here to read more about the Chiron, and stay tuned for our walkaround video from the Geneva motor show

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Comments

Anonymous

Doesn’t look that bad

03/01/2016 - 16:31 |
0 | 0
EaZy

i love the interior!

03/01/2016 - 16:34 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

My Civic has V-TEC. Does this have V-TEC?

03/01/2016 - 16:34 |
1376 | 10
Matt Robinson
Matt Robinson

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

It doesn’t, so the only logical conclusion is that your Civic is better.

03/01/2016 - 16:36 |
972 | 6
Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Totally at your side

03/01/2016 - 16:46 |
8 | 2
TheNOISYCar

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

But you don’t have a civic :( no VTEC

03/01/2016 - 17:15 |
4 | 4
Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

This deserves to be comment of the week. Like this please.

03/01/2016 - 17:46 |
2 | 38
Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

No. It also won’t have much turbo lag either xD

03/01/2016 - 18:15 |
4 | 2
DeLeon

I wonder if it really does 500kmh with a super speed key thing.. I mean why would they put in a speedo that goes to 500 if it “only” goes 420 which is even slower than the Veyron?

03/01/2016 - 16:34 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

In reply to by DeLeon

Because they will probably do a Chiron SuperSport just to get more money from dem arabs, and they dont want to change the speedo… lol

03/01/2016 - 16:41 |
30 | 0

My speedo goes to 160mph but the car tops out at 115 down hill, with a tailwind.

03/01/2016 - 16:57 |
2 | 0
Tatsuya Mikkinoppe

In reply to by DeLeon

“I mean why would they put in a speedo that goes to 500 if it “only” goes 420 which is even slower than the Veyron?”
Same thing where they put a 300km/h speedo on a Golf GTi. Will it do that stock? No.

03/01/2016 - 16:59 |
0 | 0

They probably thought that potential buyers (CTzens,people like you and me) would want to remap their Chirons,because who drives totally stock cars today?

03/01/2016 - 17:00 |
0 | 0
Anonymous
03/01/2016 - 16:35 |
88 | 0
Abdulrahman Jamokha

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

03/01/2016 - 18:24 |
0 | 12
Mr.PurpleV12

I am liking this, a lot.

03/01/2016 - 16:36 |
22 | 0
Fin Jimbo

Can you go sideways with it on K markets parking lot? ;)

03/01/2016 - 16:39 |
26 | 0

In the MotorTrend’s article I’ve read that it can…

03/01/2016 - 16:57 |
2 | 0
Doge Challengere

It looks like a cockroach on steroids

03/01/2016 - 16:46 |
26 | 4

NOT a cockroach an expensive egg

03/01/2016 - 18:16 |
0 | 0
SupercarClub

Still prefer a Koenngggigssegggnigggseggniggssseeegggg

03/01/2016 - 16:47 |
270 | 8

You spelt that wrong.

03/01/2016 - 16:48 |
116 | 2

Yeah. I’m so hyped for the new Regera!

03/01/2016 - 17:05 |
12 | 0
Ivorion

You can see the VW in this car by it’s steering wheel. It’s practically the same with a VW Golf 7 GTI wheel, just more fancy.

03/01/2016 - 16:50 |
2 | 2

I think that’s a nice touch actually. These hyper cars all exist as halo cars for their brands, with the inention of showing technical prowess and engineering achievement. The idea is also to have some of the technology (or its inspirations) “trickle down” to the brand’s more mainstream models over time. These cars serve as automotive “moonshots” where lessons can be learned that apply to other things.

Besides, its a nice wheel - looks great, must feel great. I don’t see an issue here.

03/01/2016 - 16:56 |
0 | 2

Do you also complain about the Cayman GT4 sharing seats and steering wheel with the 918?

03/01/2016 - 16:58 |
2 | 2