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Top Gear's latest trailer shows off a golden Bugatti Chiron

Top Gear is returning on March 5, and after a lackluster first series with the new hosts, the new group seems determined not to hit a sophomore slump. Chris Evans is gone, and the latest teaser trailer shows the new trio of Matt LeBlanc, Chris Harris, and Rory Reid strapped into some pretty fantastic cars, including the Bugatti Chiron and the Ford GT. All of the typical Top Gear segments appear to be present, though the quick cuts don't give us many details. The trailer shows a copious amount of powerslides from an assortment of cars, and even Chris Harris racing around Daytona. Aside from the Bugatti and Ford, cars from Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari, BMW, Aston Martin, and Alfa Romeo are all present. Co-hosts Eddie Jordan and Sabine Schmitz don't appear at all, so it seems their roles may be downplayed to focus on three guys, as was the case pre-reboot. We have some hope for this re-relaunched show and will be keeping an eye out for more details in the lead-up to the series premiere. Related Video: News Source: YouTube Celebrities TV/Movies Alfa Romeo BMW Bugatti Ferrari Ford Lamborghini Porsche Top Gear chris harris Bugatti Chiron matt leblanc

No expense spared: Bugatti explains how it 3D-prints exotic metal parts

Bugatti deputy design director Frank Heyl told Autoblog his team doesn't balk at using the most expensive materials available, and he meant it. The company described how it 3D-prints titanium and alloy parts to save weight. Look closely at the back end of the 304-mph Chiron Super Sport 300+ or the agile Chiron Pur Sport and you'll spot 3D-printed titanium components. They're the intricately-designed covers installed over the exhaust pipes; they stick out from the carbon fiber diffuser. Each part weighs four pounds, which makes it 2.6 pounds lighter than the one fitted to the standard Chiron. It's one of the weight-saving measures Bugatti took to create both cars. Manufacturing the part requires firing up four 400-watt lasers that stack 4,200 individual layers of metal powder on top of each other while fusing them. The part is extremely thin in places but remarkably solid thanks to what Bugatti refers to as a "bionic honeycomb" structure, and it's capable of withstanding temperatures of up to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. That might sound like overkill, but keep in mind the cover is on the receiving end of a 1,500-horsepower, 16-cylinder engine. The exhaust system gets really hot, really quickly under heavy acceleration. Bugatti began using 3D printing in 2018, and now the Chiron Sport, the Divo, the one-off La Voiture Noire, and the Centodieci all use components made with 3D-printed metals. The part that covers the Sport's four visible exhaust tips (there are six in total) is notably manufactured using Inconel 718, a nickel-chrome alloy whose audial resemblance to a mid-engined model is purely coincidental; it's not a blend of molten Porsches. It's a material normally used in gas turbines, the blades attached to airplane engines, space ships, and even rocket engines. Making the cover takes several days. Engineers scan every part they produce with a computer tomograph to detect air bubbles that can get trapped between the layers during the printing process. If there are none, the part is blasted with a material named corundum, painted, and sent to the Bugatti Atelier in Molsheim, France, where it's checked yet again before it's installed on the car. Few exhaust tips have such a fascinating story to tell. "The advantage of the 3D printing process lies in the geometric shapes that are possible," said Nils Weimann, Bugatti's head of body development.

Delivering a one-off Bugatti Veyron Vitesse

The Veyron is nearing the end of its production run, at the end of which Bugatti will have built only 450 examples. Of those, only 150 will be roadsters, and of those roadsters, even fewer will be the Vitesse version that combines the best attributes of the Grand Sport and Super Sport models. And with a virtually endless array of color choices, no two ever need be alike (safe for the Legend editions, each of which Bugatti will only build three examples). Yet certain examples have received extra-special treatments, and that's just what we have here.
Called the L'Or Style edition, this Vitesse roadster features a similar treatment to the L'Or Blanc edition, but in red and black instead of blue and white. Which is all well and fine, but what we're really interested in here is how it's being delivered. Because while it may seem like Bugatti's created another "one of a kind" Veyron every other day, it's not every day that you see how the logistics of delivering a $3 million supercar are handled.
Fortunately, the Symbolic Motors group that includes in its portfolio the Bugatti San Diego franchise and which handled the sale of this particular Veyron, captured the delivery process on video. We'll let you watch for yourself to see just how painstaking the process (even just that part caught on video) is - complete with wood-floored transporter truck, intake-perforated protective wrap and wheel spoke guards - but suffice it to say it's a bit more coddling than your average dealership delivery.