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The Bugatti Mistral Is the Fastest Roofless Car Ever Made
It was 21 miles per hour faster than Bugatti thought it would be.
Remember when Bugatti said it was done chasing records? Well, that turned out to be a lie. The W-16 era is coming to an end, but not before the last hurrah for the quad-turbo 8.0-liter monster. Installed in a customer’s Mistral, the marvelous engine helped the roofless Chiron become the fastest open-top production car in history.
Bugatti also misspoke about the Mistral’s top speed. It initially said the gorgeous hypercar would do 261 mph, already more than the 254.04 mph achieved by the Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse in 2013. As it turns out, the Chiron’s swan song is 21 mph faster than originally estimated. It reached 282 mph at the Papenburg test track in Germany. If you prefer metric, that’s 453.91 km/h. That makes it about 22 mph slower than the Chiron coupe upon which it's based.
Behind the wheel of the record-breaking Mistral was none other than Bugatti test driver Andy Wallace. The Le Mans winner also drove the Chiron Super Sport 300+ to a closed-car top speed record of 304.77 mph in 2019. Only 99 units of the Mistral are being made and the Record Car is claimed to be a one-off. Its striking Jet Orange accents harken back to both Veyron record cars, the 16.4 Super Sport and the aforementioned Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse. The Chiron also had a black and orange theme. By the way, the Mistral's owner also has the other three record cars.
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The Mistral has now dethroned Hennessey’s Venom GT Spyder, which did 265.6 mph back in 2016. Bugatti orchestrated the successful run on November 9 in the presence of the car's proud owner as well as Mate Rimac, the CEO of Bugatti Rimac. We’ll remind you he has a 37% share in the Rimac Group, followed by Porsche with 24%, Hyundai with 12%, and other investors with 27%. The Rimac Group has a 55% stake in the Bugatti Rimac company, with the other 45% belonging to Porsche.
Interestingly, that shareholder structure has a lot to do with Bugatti’s decision to do the top-speed run in Papenburg rather than at the Ehra-Lessien. As Top Gear reports, Bugatti simply didn’t have access to that facility because it's owned by Volkswagen Group. It's the same place where the Veyron and Chiron made history.
Hennessey claims the Venom F5 Roadster can hit the 300-mph mark, but we’ll believe it when we see it. The Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut’s top-speed run hasn’t happened yet either, so in the meantime, the Mistral is the undisputed open-top speed king.
Garrett CarverNov 14, 2024, 5:29 PM
Pretty sure you can't, at least not legally and not without paying money to find a large oval track with steeply banked corners which will allow you to do so.
Thinking this is more of those things where people with lots of money like to talk about things they spent their money on and what those things can actually do but will never do the because they, themselves, physically are unable.
Katherine CunninghamNov 14, 2024, 8:43 PM
You're not thinking outside the box. Do you need high banked corners to get this thing up to Warp Speed? No, you do not. A long enough straight chunk of asphalt would do just fine.
Could you do it on a track with banked corners with say, 10-12° of banking, given that those would we corners that would be 2 MILES in length traveled? Yes, yes you could.
So, we're looking for a facility that has an oval, with 10-12° of banking, 2 mile long corners and 8-10 mile long straights. Fully instrumented, to verify records. With a world class trauma center at the facility, world class air transport from the far reaches of the track to either the trauma center or the closet hospital with better Doctors and facility. With world class extrication experts who can cut the driver out of any kind of car, just because it would be stupid not to have any of this.
The Question of the Day then becomes: Do we know of any facility on Earth that meets or exceeds our requirements?
I honestly don't know the answer to this.
Anybody?
infinityNov 14, 2024, 8:09 PM
You clearly didn't read the article. Go read.
Bill FenwickNov 14, 2024, 2:54 PM
So who is going to drive this thing over 200 mph without the top closed and where would you do it if you wanted to?
Katherine CunninghamNov 14, 2024, 8:01 PM
Florida Turnpike, up past the West Palm Beach area, 2 am, me. The top however, will be firmly closed.
Before you ask, yes, I am extremely comfortable at 200+ mph.
Somebody want to loan me one of these things so that I can prove my point?