AUTONEWS

Bugatti Tourbillon V16: has a naturally aspirated engine of Cosworth origin that will make your hair stand on end

It has finally been possible to hear the V16 of the Bugatti Tourbillon and the reality is that it is everything you could expect from an 8.3-liter, 16-cylinder naturally aspirated engine with 1000 hp, manufactured by Cosworth.

The Tourbillon was designed with the difficult task of surpassing the Chiron, a model equipped with an imposing 8.0 engine with 16 cylinders in W, blown by four turbochargers that allowed it to reach 1600 hp. But this monster of the road also had to bow to the current need to consume less fuel and emit less carbon dioxide. Then, once the promised series of 500 Chiron units had been completed — in addition to the countless special versions based on this impressive hypercar — Bugatti moved forward with its successor, the Tourbillon, which was more powerful, faster and quicker, but whose engine, naturally aspirated rather than supercharged, had yet to reveal how it “sings”. Click on Instagram below and… turn the sound up to max.

This French manufacturer from the Volkswagen Group replaced the 8.0 W16 with an even more noble unit with greater potential to impress anyone behind the wheel. With the same 16 cylinders, but now distributed in a V shape, Bugatti has removed the complexity of the W engine. The new 8.3 V16 is substantially longer, but there is no shortage of space in the Tourbillon and the absence of four turbos made the work of Cosworth's technicians easier, who designed an atmospheric V16 with cylinders of 519 cc each, which does not inhibit it from reaching a maximum speed of 9000 rpm. And, by not having the engine's roar muffled by the four turbos, the V16 was expected to delight lovers of four-stroke engine music.

Aware that the engine is one of the Tourbillon's main assets and that all potential customers are eager to hear its song, Mate Rimac, the founder of Rimac and the electric vehicle specialist to whom VW entrusted Bugatti to electrify the Tourbillon, published a video on Instagram in which one of the development vehicles pulls the engine, making it "scream" at the top of its lungs, to the delight of lovers of this type of vehicle.

Remembering that, in addition to the 1000 hp provided by the 8.3 V16, the Tourbillon also has three electric motors with 340 hp each that, properly modulated, deliver an additional 800 hp. Of these three units, two are on the front axle (one on each wheel) and the third is coupled to the combustion engine, to increase its power and recharge the battery, which has a capacity of 25 kWh.

The Tourbillon claims 0-100 km/h in 2.0 seconds (versus 2.5 for the Chiron), only to see the speedometer happily gallop to 445 km/h, well above the Chiron's 420 km/h. But Bugatti's new hypercar, which will only start being delivered to customers in 2026, will also attract drivers who want to combine brutal performance at the expense of a combustion engine, with environmental (or noise) concerns, as it will be able to travel up to 60 km in exclusively electric mode. A passionate “toy” that many would like to own, as long as they can raise 3.8 million euros, which makes the 2.5 million for the Chiron a “bargain”.

Mundoquatrorodas