2012 Bugatti Veyron on 2040-cars

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Bugatti previews enigmatic new car ahead of Monterey debut

Bugatti will travel to The Quail, a Motorsports Gathering, with a surprise up its sleeve. The French company released a short video that previews a mysterious new model on its social media channels, but the 12-second teaser film asks more questions than it answers. Let's start with what we see: The video zooms in on four horizontal LED strips that look like they're either a headlight or part of one. If we're indeed looking at a headlight, the new model seemingly steers clear of borrowing styling cues from the Chiron, which wears horizontal units. Deciphering the various hashtags isn't much help. Bugatti titled the video "Unlock an Icon" and hinted that it's "#OpeningUpNewHorizons." UNLOCK AN ICON 19 AUGUST 2022 | 10:20 PST (17:20 GMT) THE QUAIL, A MOTORSPORTS GATHERING#BUGATTI #MontereyCarWeek #TheQuail@TheQuailEvents pic.twitter.com/NP0v0AF2CS — Bugatti (@Bugatti) August 15, 2022 As for the rest, well ... your guess is as good as ours. Whatever we're looking at, it will be the first new Bugatti model since Croatia-based Rimac took over the brand in June 2021. Company founder Mate Rimac stressed that Bugatti won't immediately drop piston-powered cars, and he also argued against lazily taking the electric Nevera and putting a Bugatti logo on it. Bugatti announced in January 2022 that the Chiron is sold out, though the W16-powered coupe remains in production, so the car depicted in the preview video likely isn't another variant of it (like, say, the Super Sport). All of our questions will be answered when the next addition to the Bugatti family makes its debut at 10:20 a.m. PDT this Friday, August 19, in Monterey, California. That's 1:20 p.m. in New York City and 7:20 p.m. in Bugatti's hometown of Molsheim, France. Bugatti Luxury Performance

Out with the clay, in with the VR: Bugatti's design studio is all digital

Bugatti recently unveiled three limited-edition, multi-million-dollar Chiron derivatives in less than a year, a Herculean task for such a small company. Achim Anscheidt, the head of the firm's design department, told Autoblog maintaining this pace wouldn't have been possible without the use of virtual reality technology. "We have the feeling we don't need clay anymore. With VR, we can do everything on the spot. We can sit next to each other and talk about the car, we can change the wheels, change the color, and sometimes make modifications on the spot," he explained. In comparison, using clay has several disadvantages. It's more difficult to tell how sunlight reflects off the body, for example. It's also more expensive and far more time consuming. "It's only through [VR] that we had the chance to develop the Divo, the La Voiture Noire and the Centodieci in such a rapid amount of time," he affirmed. The team in charge of designing the EB110-inspired Centodieci notably began the project about six months before the car made its public debut at the 2019 edition of the ritzy, champagne-soaked Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance held on California's picturesque Pacific coast. While VR isn't new, the technology wasn't advanced enough to replace clay in a styling studio until about 2016. Anscheidt hasn't looked back; going all-digital reduced the amount of time it takes to design a car by about 40%. This isn't a case of robots replacing humans, either. Bugatti still needs talented designers, and the number of people it assigns to each project hasn't drastically changed, but they now work differently than in the past. View 40 Photos And, the widespread use of VR in Bugatti's design department doesn't mean its cars are no longer drawn by hand. Anscheidt explained every project still starts with a series of sketches that allow designers to explore different directions and identify the one they want to take the car-to-be in. Here again, digitalization plays a substantial role. Early sketches are sometimes done on a tablet rather than on a piece of paper. "Of course, when [deputy design director] Frank Heyl and I go to lunch, we still sketch on napkins," he said with a smile. Knowing how to use 3D-modeling and VR is only one of the skills Anscheidt looks for when hiring new designers.

Bugatti Chiron to pack 1,500 electrically turbocharged horses

For a car capable of unprecedented speeds, the Bugatti Veyron sure has stuck around a long time – but it's almost gone. And that means it's time for the Alsatian marque to move on to the next thing. Fortunately, according to Automobile magazine, Bugatti has been working on the Veyron's successor for about four years now. And though Bugatti has kept pretty quiet on the details of what its next hypercar will entail, the publication's well-informed European correspondent Georg Kacher has some tasty details on the followup to one of the most famous automobiles of the modern age. For starters, the Veyron successor is expected to carry the same 8.0-liter quad-turbo W16 engine as its predecessor – only with much more power. Where the original coupe and Grand Sport roadster produced 1,000 horsepower and the Super Sport and Vitesse packed 1,200, the followup is tipped to ratchet up the horse-count to a whopping 1,500 hp. That headline figure is being enabled by the use of direct injection and higher-pressure turbochargers – at least two of which are expected to be electrically powered for immediate response. The result is an anticipated 0-62 time of under 2.5 seconds and a top speed of 288 miles per hour – 18 miles faster even than the record-setting Super Sport. Active aero will keep it stable and carbon-ceramic brakes, operating in tandem with the rear-wing air-brake, will keep it all in check. The cabin is tipped to be more spacious and ergonomic while offering easier ingress, egress and outward visibility than the Veyron. And this time around, it'll be lighter weight and with a greater emphasis on more nimble handling. We're told to still expect Bugatti to revive the Chiron name used earlier on the concept (pictured above) that previewed the Veyron back in 1999 and which originally belonged to Louis Chiron, one of the most decorated racing drivers from the marque's hey day. Unfortunately Automobile reports that the launch of the new Chiron has been pushed off from 2015 to 2016. But rather than leave the factory in Molsheim with nothing to do, word has it that Bugatti could extend the Veyron's life by creating a Speedster to be produced in strictly limited numbers and with an even higher price tag. Related Video: