[bivin]

A modified Bugatti Chiron has hit the 304.77MPH at the Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany.

The engine now produces 1600 BHP, 100BHP over the "regular" Chiron. (Similar to the Centodieci concept)

The French brand collaborated with Dallara to make the Aero changes to the Chirons body.

Michelin provided special Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres for the job.

Driving duties was handled by racing driver Andy Wallace, who famously set the record in the McLaren F1.

Below is the youtube link of the attempt and an interesting article by Pistonheads about the prep work that went

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkiyAZ63RT8

https://www.pistonheads.com/news/gen...-304-mph/40876

I wonder how they will lay claim to the title of Fastest "Production" car though, seeing as this car is far from stock.

[bigron]

This is just insane. This car is indeed the pinnacle of modern 4 wheel engineering.

300 MPH, the mythical barrier that has been chased by the super car manufacturers world over for decades stands broken. I cant even begin to imagine what a human mind feels at 490 kmph plus speeds. I have had the opportunity to touch 300 kmph on a few occasions and the world is just a blur, so at 490 it is probably invisible.

A lot went into setting this Chiron up for the task at hand and the 100 bhp of additional power over the regular Chiron was probably the least complex modification.

I am now waiting for Koenigsegg to respond to this.

In the meantime, well done Bugatti!

[bivin]

Apparently the car was still pulling when Wallace ran out of road. The prospect of a 500kmph car was tantalizingly close!!

[raystriker]

I can't help but smile. All this time influencers and automobile "hype-beasts" have been making fun of Bugatti for capping the Chiron at 261mph and being "destroyed" by the Koenigseggs. The general census had become of Bugatti being the Goliath, and Koenigsegg being David. Somehow, the Bugatti was treated as a lesser car.

Well, Bugatti has won the 300mph war. Now, it stands to see how further beyond the 300 mph mark can the Koenigsegg Jesko, SSC Tuatara and Hennessy Venom F5 go.

Also I don't know why people are nitpicking over the car being a "modified" Chiron. Just think of it as a prototype. I'm sure Bugatti has enough money to make it a production car and introduce it as the Chiron Supersport.

(It's not the first time top speed records were attempted by non-production version of cars. The Mclaren F1 243 mph speed everyone talks about, was set by a prototype)

[AMG Power]

The smaller yet significant things from the attempt:

1. Bugatti will attempt no more record breaking attempts. According to the President Stephen Winkelman, Bugatti has proven several times they make the fastest cars. This is it.

2. The driver Andy Wallace is 58 years old and has made many other similar top speed records including those for Jaguar and McLaren.

3. Bugatti worked on this attempt for 12 months slowly increasing the speed limit to break the 300 mph barrier.

4. At this speed even the telemetry doesn't keep up. According to Andy the team was wondering why he was so elated until the telemetry showed them the results.

5. Michelin developed special tyres for the car which were X Rayed before each attempt.

6. Higher seventh gear ratios, power increased to 1600 bhp and certain aerodynamic changes that helped this car achieve this speed will likely find their way into the Centodieci.

7. Bugatti has admitted others may go faster but it is withdrawing from the competition to build the fastest serial production cars after clearly demonstrating that it can.

8. The run was recorded by TUV, Germany's technical inspection association so it will go down as an official record, not just a claim by a manufacturer.

9. The particular engine that achieved this run was tuned to 1578 BHP and was nicknamed "Thor".

10. Although Bugatti has not yet confirmed it, all these modifications are likely to result in a Super Sport version of the Chiron.

[Flyer]

Here is the official video posted by Bugatti.

https://youtu.be/FuS_bXJNync

Well Done Bugatti

The driver Andy Wallace is 58 years old and has made many other similar top speed records including those for Jaguar and McLaren

Hats off to Andy Wallace, breaking records even at this age.

[raystriker]

Well that's it folks, there should be no confusion about this being a "modified" Chiron. TUV has also approved the speed and the validity of the run.

This car that ran 304.77 mph is definitely its own car and will be christened as the Chiron SS, and I am 99.9% sure it is what the customer cars will be. It wouldn't make sense otherwise to have a non final car break the 300mph mark and set the new record. If anything, the customer cars will be more polished.


Source: Jonny Liebermann's intragram

[nikhilthegunner]

It'll be exciting to see what the electric cars begin achieving. The Battista supposedly carries way more power than this Bugatti so imagine the speeds that the Electric supercars from Rimac, Pininfarina and Lotus could do! It'll push the boundaries of tyre manufacturers as well since they'll need to make tyres that can actually survive at those high speeds.

[AnandB]

What an engineering marvel Can't imagine the aerodynamics involved just to keep it from taking off.

Another marvel is having such roads to attempt these records

[abhishek46]

Originally Posted by bivin

I wonder how they will lay claim to the title of Fastest "Production" car though, seeing as this car is far from stock.

As long as the Car can be used on public roads, and sold, it will have no problems to make such claims.

The McLaren F1, which held the speed record for a long time wasn't completely stock either. It had a higher set rev limit and some gearing changes, as far I can recollect.

[Rehaan]

I gotta say, it's been a while since I've looked at a modern car and appreciated the "coachwork"



Some additional info I've extracted/quoted from jonnylieberman's instagram post:

• It was a ONE-WAY test on Volkswagen’s Ehra-Lessien Test Track.

• Now, production car record? Gets tricky. TÜV, the German testing agency, only requires a one-way run. The Guinness Book of World Records requires a two-way average, as does the FIA.

• The car’s body has different aero, the engine is out of the EB110 tribute Centodieci—1,578 horsepower, a taller seventh gear ratio, new Michelin tires, no passenger seat but a bunch of GPS computers where said seat would be, and a roll cage.

• So, production? I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here, as I’m pretty positive this car represents the upcoming Chiron Super Sport, aka Chiron SS and losing a seat but adding a cage is a wash weight-wise and also smart.

• I’ll just point out to @koenigseggautomotive and @hennesseyperformance that A) the Chiron’s analogue speedometer goes to 500 km/h but B) this black and orange Bug only went 490 km/h. Happy hunting!

[venkyhere]

Originally Posted by bigron

A lot went into setting this Chiron up for the task at hand and the 100 bhp of additional power over the regular Chiron was probably the least complex modification.

+1. It's the aero-mods where the real business has happened.
If they wanted to go from 261mph to 304mph purely from horsepower alone (assuming at these speeds, most of the power coming out of the flywheel goes to air resistance) with a very conservative accuracy of 80% in the calculation ; that would mean adding (304/261)^3 * 0.8 = 1.264 times the stock chiron's power. That would have easily meant adding over 375 BHP for 43mph speedup. That they had to add only 100 BHP, is a testament to the aero-sorcery that has gone in. It's particularly commendable, since they had to reduce drag significantly, without reducing (or even adding to) stock chiron's downforce (which would be equally critical, considering the higher speed)

[meta]

Originally Posted by Rehaan

:
• It was a ONE-WAY test on Volkswagen’s Ehra-Lessien Test Track.

Almost certainly, the speed in the other direction would have been different, but I doubt Bugatti chose the direction they used based solely on wind conditions. It is more likely that they assigned more weight to safety based on the layout: embankments, bumps, curves, etc. Tackling the reverse direction as well would have more than doubled the challenges for the driver and the engineers. All the other logistics would be more than twice as complicated too. They just wanted to get the 300mph thing over with as quickly as possible.

Originally Posted by Rehaan

:
• Now, production car record? Gets tricky. TÜV, the German testing agency, only requires a one-way run. The Guinness Book of World Records requires a two-way average, as does the FIA.

Yes, with this record, one should explicitly use the "one-way" qualifier with the number if one wants to be precise. The McLaren F1's record was a two-way average on Ehra-Lessien, by the way. Again, I think it's because the challenge here was so enormous, Bugatti didn't want to bite off more than they could chew, or more than they needed for the task at hand. In the news cycle, "first to 300mph" easily drowns the "oh, but but, it's not a two-way average" protests. Perhaps this detail is out there within the news coverage of this, but for all I know, Bugatti's chosen driving direction could have been safer/easier, but marginally slower. As in, what if they had gotten a slightly higher speed in the other direction? In any case, they achieved enough of a margin above 300 that they would still have cracked the 300mph barrier even if the two-way average were lower.

Originally Posted by Rehaan

:
• The car’s body has different aero, the engine is out of the EB110 tribute Centodieci—1,578 horsepower, a taller seventh gear ratio, new Michelin tires, no passenger seat but a bunch of GPS computers where said seat would be, and a roll cage.

That is par for the course given where we are technologically today with cars. It is neither sensible nor even possible to have a single car setup (body, aero, gear ratios, engine tune, tires, and so on) be best suited for both acceleration and top speed.

Koenigsegg's Jesko is offered to the customers in two very different versions: high-downforce (which is what the public has seen so far) and high-speed (a streamlined version with no S-duct, no massive wing, various other aero differences, different suspension hardware, more trunk space, etc.). The C7 Corvette ZR-1 is another example where you have a high-speed "little" wing version and a "track-pack" giant wing version. The Gen V Viper ACR Extreme Aero, the one with the enormous wing, saw its top speed fall down from ~208mph to ~170mph even though it had more power—it obliterated all kinds of track records though.

As for the engine, it's not so much from the Centodieci as it is the upgrade they have been working on for some time. The Centodieci is merely a concept at this stage. What they showed at the Quail recently wasn't a real car but a 1:1 scale model. The Agera RS that Koenigsegg used for the previous speed record also did not have the standard Agera RS engine, but the "1MW Upgrade" version, which they only offered to a small number of cars out of the small number of cars they made. The tires and the gear ratio stuff falls in the same category: for a super-high-speed specialized version of a car, you will have to specialize such aspects.

Regarding the weight, the loss of a seat (whose shell is carbon fiber by the way) is more than offset by the weight of the roll cage and the other temporary equpiment they had in there.

Originally Posted by Rehaan

:
• So, production? I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here, as I’m pretty positive this car represents the upcoming Chiron Super Sport, aka Chiron SS and losing a seat but adding a cage is a wash weight-wise and also smart.

Super Sport would be a good guess, but these names aren't final until they do a press release.

Originally Posted by Rehaan

:
• I’ll just point out to @koenigseggautomotive and @hennesseyperformance that A) the Chiron’s analogue speedometer goes to 500 km/h but B) this black and orange Bug only went 490 km/h. Happy hunting!

Leaving the legalities and technicalities aside, to me, the term "production car" also means how "production" the car is from the owner's standpoint: tested, reliable, robust, non-finicky, fixable, and so on. After all, that is the actual purpose of a production car: to be owned and driven by an end user without breaking down all the time! In that sense, Bugatti is in a different league altogether. Something like:

Bugatti >>>>>> Koenigsegg >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Hennessey

[meta]

Originally Posted by nikhilthegunner

It'll be exciting to see what the electric cars begin achieving. The Battista supposedly carries way more power than this Bugatti so imagine the speeds that the Electric supercars from Rimac, Pininfarina and Lotus could do! It'll push the boundaries of tyre manufacturers as well since they'll need to make tyres that can actually survive at those high speeds.

With electrical (or electrical-hybrid) powertrains, straight-line speed is not as straightforward (pun intended) because there are limits to which you can spin an electric motor.

In the Porsche 918 spyder, the front motors disconnect at 265km/h. In the SF90 stradale, the front motors disconnect at 210km/h. In the Sián, electric power decouples at just 130km/h. The upcoming crop of electric supercars (Pininfarina Battista, Lotus Evija, Rimac C_Two, Tesla Roadster, ...) all have healthy top speed numbers because that's what marketing demands if you have to sell cars at these levels, but none of them is gunning for the speed record.

High speeds with electrical propulsion will also require more complex transmissions—you can't just do it with one gear ratio. More engineering work needs to be done in this area, which will help unlock both higher speeds and better range with electrical drivetrains.

[raystriker]

Originally Posted by meta

With electrical (or electrical-hybrid) powertrains, straight-line speed is not as straightforward (pun intended) because there are limits to which you can spin an electric motor.

In the Porsche 918 spyder, the front motors disconnect at 265km/h. In the SF90 stradale, the front motors disconnect at 210km/h. In the Sián, electric power decouples at just 130km/h. The upcoming crop of electric supercars (Pininfarina Battista, Lotus Evija, Rimac C_Two, Tesla Roadster, ...) all have healthy top speed numbers because that's what marketing demands if you have to sell cars at these levels, but none of them is gunning for the speed record.

High speeds with electrical propulsion will also require more complex transmissions—you can't just do it with one gear ratio. More engineering work needs to be done in this area, which will help unlock both higher speeds and better range with electrical drivetrains.

True, electric cars need gearboxes too (as torque multipliers).

From what I understand, the larger problem at hand with high performance electric cars are their ability to discharge electricity consistently at an insane rate to maintain or accelerate to higher speeds. Also cooling becomes a huge issue, for repeatable performance. Also the commercial battery technology is not there yet, to ensure high rates of charge and discharge aren't a detriment to the battery's life.