8/17/2023 0 Comments High octane shift cars era startsIt’s like having your own private luxury roller coaster and you can let it drop whenever there’s open road ahead. It’s giddy fun experiencing that sort of explosive acceleration, and hearing those sounds, while feeling totally secure in its warm leather cockpit. The car’s sheer power makes sure of that. Unlike other hypercars, the Chiron doesn’t punish the driver at ordinary speeds, but it’s still exhilarating when pushed fast. A car with a four-digit horsepower output but with little terror is sort of an oxymoron. The Chiron is big and strong, but I’ve been more intimidated by cars with half the Chiron’s horsepower. The cockpit is a combination of tasteful leather and shining metal accents. ![]() The Chiron is a laid back, stylish brute of a car. Leitzinger pulled over near Castle Rock just before the famous curving Bixby Creek Bridge - you may not know its name but you’ve seen the bridge in car commercials - and I took the wheel. The turbochargers stopped working and the engine slowed. There was a bigger, more explosive whooshing sound, like a monstrous sigh, as the air that had been going into the turbochargers was suddenly redirected out into the open air. Peter Valdes-Dapena/CNNįrom about 30 miles an hour we reached 120 in a few seconds. The Bugatti Chiron's rear wing raised automatically to allow heat to drift away from its big engine. My spine and skull were pinned back into the leather seat. There was a whooshing sound as turbochargers pulled air into the roaring engine just behind our heads. He warned me to brace myself, then pulled the left steering paddle - the Chiron does have steering wheel paddles for gear shifting, but you don’t have to use them - then he pressed hard on the gas pedal. As we entered an open stretch of straight road, Leitzinger decided to show off the car’s acceleration. We started off on the famous Pacific Coast Highway, which runs along the ocean shore. It is designed so that anyone who’s ever driven a Mercedes-Benz or BMW can get in and immediately feeI at ease. Those cars are marketed as “race cars for the street” and have controls to match. Other exotic high-horsepower two-seaters from brands like Lamborghini and Ferrari eschew common gear selector stalks in favor of buttons and steering wheel paddles. That’s unusual only because it’s so normal. (EB is for Bugatti founder Ettore Bugatti.) The Chiron’s seven-speed automatic transmission is operated using a stubby but elegant gear selector stalk between the seats. I could choose a track mode, a high speed Autobahn mode or the normal EB mode, which is good for most ordinary driving situations. There’s also a knob in the steering wheel to set driving modes. The start button is in the steering wheel. I had driven a Chiron before, but it had been a while. Butch Leitzinger, a retired professional race car driver now employed by Bugatti took the wheel first to remind me how the car’s controls worked. We started our drive around 8:30 am from the Munras Inn in Monterey where I’d been staying. I might have only moved my pancreas backwards an inch when I stepped on the accelerator instead of the full inch and a quarter I could get with 93 octane. ![]() Heaven forbid I didn’t experience peak performance. Racing fuel was added to the tank to boost the octane rating. Gas stations would be easy enough to find along our route, but the problem was the Chiron requires at least 93 octane fuel for peak performance, while most California gas stations carry 91 octane at most. Depending on how you drive it, the Chiron’s fuel consumption is somewhere between that of a Chevrolet Suburban and an uncontrolled refinery fire. ![]() The 100 octane gas wasn’t really needed for refueling. Like the lack of luggage space and the racing fuel the Nissan pickup hauled for us. It is in fact, rather laid back.īut it does have its quirks. It has a 1,500 horsepower 16-cylinder engine with four turbochargers but it is, amazingly, not at all terrifying to drive. The Bugatti Chiron was designed to be the ultimate grand touring car, combining outrageous power with comfort, ease and refinement. It’s also the reason Bugatti CEO Stephan Winkelmann told me the company is considering new models for people who want something just slightly more practical. This sort of absurdity is part of the charm of the beautifully impractical Chiron. Whenever we stopped with the Bugatti Chiron, people came over to tell us how beautiful it was.
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