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Bugatti Divo will be a $5.8 million hypercar with an appetite for corners

Too much is never enough, especially when you're talking about Bugatti supercars. The Divo is the next step in Bugatti's continuing history of building the most covetable vehicles on the planet. Based on the existing 1,479 horsepower Chiron, the Divo is intended to be lighter in weight and significantly quicker around corners. Oh yes, and it's almost massively expensive, with a starting price of approximately $5.8 million. If you want one, hurry up, because only 40 will be produced. "Happiness is not around the corner. It is the corner. The Divo is made for corners," says Stephan Winkelmann, President of Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. "With the Divo, we want to thrill people throughout the world. With this project, the Bugatti team has an opportunity to interpret the brand DNA in terms of agile, nimble handling in a significantly more performance-oriented way." Little to no details have been released about the Divo ahead of its official introduction this August at Monterey Car Week. The powertrain will likely be carryover from the Chiron, which means the quad-turbocharged W12 will be there in all its decadent glory. The body could be significantly different, however, in keeping with Bugatti's promise that the car has been honed to go around corners at physics-defying speed. As for the name, it might conjure up images of a certain 1970s-80s band, but the Divo is named after Albert Divo, a French racing driver who twice won the Targa Florio while piloting a Bugatti race machine.Related Video: Design/Style Bugatti Lightweight Vehicles Luxury Special and Limited Editions Supercars Pebble Beach supercar turbo hypercar Bugatti Chiron horsepower w12 bugatti divo

VW Group plan puts Porsche in charge of a 'super-premium' division

An Automobile report looks into what's happening on the organizational and technical sides of the Volkswagen Group, and what those changes could mean for the premium brands. The wide-angle view is that Porsche appears to have been anointed to "coordinate the future activities" at Audi, Bentley, Bugatti and Lamborghini. Audi would cede Lamborghini guardianship to Stuttgart, and Ducati — via a new concern called Ducati Enterprises — would become the shepherd for VW's other Italian investments. Executives target Jan. 1, 2019, to complete the reshuffle. VW wants to save a boodle by tying up four of its five top-tier brands, and putting the one with the highest ROI in charge. Porsche, within its own house, wants to reduce expenditures by $2.3 billion per year over for four years, the savings already earmarked for improving internal processes like R&D and production. Having Porsche share those gains as well as lead development of platforms, components and future-tech strategies for the sister sports car brands could benefit everyone. In the near-term, the brands have their own plans: Bugatti CEO Stephan Winkelmann is said to want a Chiron Superleggera, a roofless and "completely reskinned" Chiron Aperta, and a track-only Chiron SS. The Superleggera could take the Chiron Sport's and Divo's Jenny Craig routines even further. The Aperta seems a natural successor to the Veyron Grand Sport, a natural evolution of the recently introduced Sky View roof, and a reskin might include numerous Divo cues. It's also said Bugatti's considering "an all-electric high-end model" in conjunction with Porsche, Rimac, and Dallara, but name one supercar or hypercar manufacturer that isn't considering a lightning-fast EV. Lamborghini, deep into work on follow-ups for the Huracan and Aventador, might get a bit of a bump with the new plan. The carbon "monofuselage" for the next V12 flagship is said to be too far developed and too complex to scrap. It puts two electric motors on the front axle, batteries in the middle, and a naturally aspirated V12 with around 770 horsepower plus another e-motor with 402 horsepower in back. The Huracan is said to get a version of the same carbon architecture at the moment, but the corporate reorganization might press pause on it. Automobile says options include continuing the Huracan/ Audi R8 twinning, but that depends on Audi saying "Ja" to a third-gen R8 with Lamborghini bones.

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.