Bugatti Chiron Top Speed
The 420 km/h figure is a limiter, not a ceiling. Bugatti caps the Chiron there because no road tyre on sale can safely handle much more, and because getting past it needs a longer, more slippery body. The car has the power to go faster. It just is not allowed to.
Full specifications
About the Chiron
The Chiron replaced the Veyron in 2016 and had a difficult job. The Veyron had already done the impossible thing, so the Chiron could not just be faster. It had to be better everywhere, and it mostly was.
Power went up to 1,500 PS from the same 8.0 litre W16, which is really two V8s sharing a crankshaft, fed by four turbochargers. Two of them do the work at low revs and the other two join in higher up, so the car pulls hard from almost any speed instead of waiting for the boost to arrive.
What people tend to underestimate is how ordinary it feels when you are not pushing. The Chiron will sit in traffic all day. The violence only shows up when you ask for it, and then 0 to 200 km/h takes 6.5 seconds, which is roughly what a hot hatchback needs to reach 100.
All 500 were sold. The last one left the Molsheim factory in 2022, closing out the standard car and leaving the special editions to finish the story.
Specifications from Bugatti. Photography © Bugatti Newsroom.