- What's in a name? In the case of the new Bugatti,
more than usual, I think. This is the Tourbillon. (upbeat electronic music) If this film types you're 35
or makes you feel a bit royale, then do please think about
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(car engine revving) Despite the obvious family resemblance to its direct predecessors,
the Veyron and Chiron, this 3.8 million euro
Tourbillon is totally new car. And despite the visual similarities, I think the ethos behind it shows a potentially interesting shift in the philosophy of hypercars in general. In fact, this might just
be a watershed moment. The figures are amazing. I don't actually think
they are the biggest story, that's all to do with the name, which we will come back to in a bit. But this car has 1800 PS, 1775 brake horsepower and old money, and it's split up between
electric and the engine. We'll get the electric outta way first. So we've got three, 250 kilowatt motors, two in the front and one at the rear, which also obviously acts as starter motor and reverse as well. The engine, gone are the
turbos, gone is the W16, and in its place we have
a naturally aspirated 8.3 liter V16 engine making a
thousand PS, so what's that? 986 brake horse power. (powerful techno music) This monster of an engine
has over a thousand parts and will rev to 9,000 RPM. It has been produced with who else but the current kings of
hypercar engines Cosworth and I thought it would be fun
to do a little comparison. So just as a reminder, here's
what their two most recent naturally aspirated V12s sound like. First, the six and a half
liter Aston Martin Valyrie. (engine intensely revving) (car whizzing) And now the 3.9 liter GMA T.50. (engine intensely revving) (car quickly passing) And this is a taste of what the Bugatti's new 8.3 liter V16 sounds like. (engine deeply revving) It is a very distinctive
haunting baleful sort of sound and it reminds me instantly of the only other V16 I've ever heard that of the BRM Grand Prix
car of the early 1950s. That's despite the BRM's engine being tiny at just one and a half
liters and supercharged. Anyway, as well as sounding
better, this new V16, which is mated to a new eight
speed dual clutch transmission also has other advantages
over the old turbocharged W16. It's lighter obviously, than the W16 so this weighs about 256
kilos, which is pretty good. So it's about 50% more than
something like the T50s but obviously you've got
much bigger displacement, and the extra cylinders in there as well. Crankshaft is about a meter
along apparently, which is... Yeah the physics going on in there should be incredible
to try and understand. But that 256 kilos is about 156 kilos lighter than the old W 2 engine. Of course, this car does
have a 25 kilowatt hour oil called 800 volt battery to haul around allowing it to travel up to 40 miles on electric power alone. However, Bugatti says the
battery has been integrated as a structural part of the car, which along with the next generation T800 carbon composite for the body shell has helped save some weight. Overall, the Tourbillon is claimed to be a little lighter than
the Chiron it replaces, at around 1,950 kilos or 4,300 pounds. Now, to tell us a bit
more about the aesthetics, engineering, and the inspirations taken from the company's past, who better than the
ever affable Frank Heyl, Bugatti's Director of Design. Thank you very much for talking
around the design of this. It is... It's extraordinary. So the first thing that
sort of jumps outta me is just you notice the lack
of height compared to Chiron. How much lower is it? - It's 33 millimeters lower
and as you know in car design, it's all about proportion, no? You got to get the proportions just right. So it's the relation and
size of one thing to another. So if you have a 20
inch in the front wheel and a rear wheel 21 inch, but then the roof is 30 millimeters lower, it immediately makes
the wheels look bigger and it's this proportional
play that we love. Plus as you know in aerodynamics
it's about CD times A, so drag coefficients times A, A is the surface, the
frontal area of the car. And this is really what we found in 20 years of wind tunnel development with Chiron and Veyron programs. If you just make the car lower,
it is the greatest effect to a speed pickup beyond
400 kilometers an hour, - Which was something
that's back in the day, Bugatti with the Type 57, the SC, that was the whole reason
for doing that, wasn't it? - Exactly, this is Jean Bugatti, this is in the thirties now. He created the Atlantic,
the car that we believe is one of the most
beautiful cars on the planet and he got a few things exactly right in terms of proportion
but also in terms of aero. So he took a type 57 chassis
and submerged the engine behind and below the front axle. So in fact, like one of the first front mid engine cars if you will. And so he got the bonnet lower, he got the seat lower,
he got the roof lower and ultimately he reduced
frontal area through that. It's the same straight eight
cylinder compressor engine that he had on the regular type 57s. But the SC, the S stands for surbaissé so below base and he made that car go beyond 200 kilometers an hour. We're talking 1930s, right? We're talking gravel road,
skinny tires, (indistinct). It might have actually
been quite a scary thing but never nonetheless... - Scary, brilliant, who knows? - Yeah, nonetheless a
remarkable achievement. And so we thought, well wait a minute. The the concept of surbaissé matches our observations
in the wind tunnel. That's a beautiful source of
inspiration for the new car. - And there are obviously sort of other tropes from that era as well. We've got a spine down here, which is something seen-
- [Frank] Exactly. - [Henry] Which was obviously from- - [Frank] Yeah. - [Henry] The landscape when
they had to rivet the spine down the car 'cause they
couldn't weld it on. - [Frank] He had the body
crafted from a magnesium that couldn't be welded back in the day. So it was riveted together in the center and it's ever since those days, that the accentuated center line became part of our
stylistic DNA for the brand. So that's why you'll find
the new wide horseshoe has a central beam, this is actually to catch the pendulums
in terms of a crash. But then the line is
continued through the bonnet in this aluminum finish and through the central windscreen wiper, and then goes into the
interior along all the dials and the ambient lighting
and continues on the roof to become even the third
brake light in the rear, and it's a cool thing. We believe that if you see this car from like a hundred meters away and the third brake light comes on, you can, "Okay, that's a Bugatti." Know, very far away even before
you see the rest of the car. - Yeah, I love a single windscreen, but I have a thing about it, single windscreen wipers
are just... (Frank laughs) Obviously, you mentioned
the horseshoe there, which is actually again part
of the chassis, is that right? - Yes, yes. - So if you strip all the body work off, you still have the horseshoe underneath- - [Frank] Yes.
- [Henry] Which is quite cool. - If let's say, a customer
comes to the Atelier in Molsheim where his car's being built and there's no body panels on it yet, you can immediately recognize it still as that brand, no, Bugatti because you still see the crash structure is actually the horseshoe. And aerodynamically also,
and thermodynamically it makes sense because you get in on the highest pressure air or air pressure on the whole car, which is the front horseshoe. You get that really wide air intake and then we feed the air
through the radiators and out the bonnet, out the top. And any kind of air that you
feed in through the front and push up above... - [Henry] It's like an S duct, basically. - Has additional effect
on the downforce, no? And it's downforce that you don't have to pay for with drag, right? And it also enables us to
have the whole front end, the whole front clam is one piece, which in turn again enables us to make these body panels really thin because we have multiple
mounting points underneath. And so then you can construct a bootlet for the trunk, for the front trunk, which weighs like not more than 700 grams and in turn it's just this little hatch. But it gives you access to a
sizable amount of boot space, actually, larger than the Chiron even, which you load a very long suitcase into. It's kind of odd shaped but
we like our odd shaped luggage 'cause it kind of gives
away what you drive, no? If you turn up with that in a hotel. And then that also enables us to construct the hinges in a very thin way because it only weighs
700 grams to hold it, no? And then the lock can be smaller and it's a whole chain of causalities that leads to lightweight
construction like that, no. - You would never guess
actually looking at this just straight away that it was one piece because you have all these
amazing sort of shapes on there. - Yeah, we call those
the flying fenders, no? Because we now actually
manage to squeeze down the low beam and high beam
modules for the headlights down to 12 millimeters. We were already very proud back in the day when we did Chiron to get
them down to 35 millimeters, now they're even just one third of that covering the whole high
beam and low beam functions. And through that we could
design the headlights in such a slim way that we could feed air in underneath the headlight
and stream the air through these ducts and and
into the side air intakes to pressurize the intakes for the engine. - [Henry] Run air, basically. - Naturally aspirated engine not charge, will not actually pull its own air. So any bit of extra
pressurization on the intakes, yeah, will be better for
the performance, certainly. - [Henry] Yeah.
- So and it's in that way that we spoke about timelessness, no? So how do you make a car timeless and endure the centuries? This year we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Type 35. So these things are around
for decades at least, if not hundreds of years. Once built, hopefully never crashed, they don't somehow disappear, no? They endure the decades in the corner. So it's garages, let's say,
and being taken care of. - We'll come back to crash
structure in a second. Something else obviously
from from that era, the Royale Type 41 is it? - Type 41, yeah. - [Henry] Obviously, brought
in this sort of the idea of the two-tone, which
we have on this as well. - [Frank] Yes. - [Henry] Which brings us to this, which is another-
- [Frank] Yes. - [Henry] Sort of most
trademark we've seen. - Yeah, trademark Bugatti line on it. It's also the physical parting line between the two-tone paint scheme, no? Many customers like to configure
their cars in two tones. It works beautifully in a
monochromatic format as well, but here we have it in two tones and it's a nice separation line as well, as it's trimmed in this
aluminum polished finish. - Right, I think we
should have a talk about the back of the car.
- Yes. - And your patents- - Yes.
- Around back. (both gentlemen laughing) While we move around to the back, I think it's worth
mentioning the suspension because it has, to my eyes, perhaps the most beautiful
parts on the whole car. It's a multi-link setup front and rear, made up of these organically designed 3D printed aluminum parts. They're just stunning
but they also save 45% in terms of weight compared to the steel parts on the Chiron. Tires have always been a
talking point with Bugatti's and these MICHELIN Pilot Sport Cup 2s measuring 285/35 R 20 at the front and 345/30 R 21 at the rear, have been developed,
especially for the Tourbillon. Now, let's have a look at the aerodynamics and the rear of the car, which I actually prefer to the front. I love the sort of, the more accentuated haunches of the car as
well, I think that's really- - Yeah, really it's the play
of positive and negative. - Yeah.
- It's almost sculptural. There's no line on this at all. It's just surface and reflection, no? There's something... - And obviously we can see, you know, we've got the engine exposed as it was. - Yeah, that was a hard fight not to have a glass cover on it actually. Still in the year 2026 when
we come out with this baby and to fulfill all the pedestrian laws. But we managed to do that and that's why we now
have a free engine bay. You can still fully breathe in and... - You're saying this is why, the sort of cages 'round
the throttle bodies. - Yes, so those are 82
millimeter throttle bodies, the biggest ones we could find. However, they come obviously not meant to be exposed like this. So we put them in little,
let's say aluminum cages that then again have rounded off corners so nobody can ever get hurt on this. And yeah, that's how these came to be. - Amazing and then 'round the rear. So this is, as we come around here, obviously got the light motif front here, but the diffuser is the
big thing at the rear. - Yeah, this is another
takeaway let's say, from these 20 years of doing
these high speed programs. No, you want to create the car
to be aerodynamically neutral at speeds beyond 400 kilometers an hour, not utilizing a wing because any bit of aerodynamic that you... Bit of down force that
you create using a wing, you pay for with drag, right? And we didn't want drag here
so the most efficient thing is to keep the wing
retracted in top speed. Yes, it does have a
button to deploy the wing and you would use it on a on
the racetrack in handling mode or it would air brake obviously, if you hit the brakes really hard. But in top speed mode it stays retracted and it's only through
the base shape of the car that we managed to achieve that. So the car canceled out enough lift with the down flows that it creates to be aerodynamically
neutral at top speed, which is it sounds like, "Oh yeah, okay." No, that wasn't easy to do. (gentlemen laughing) And the enabler here is this diffuser. So we no longer have a crash
beam in the classical sense in the rear that is made from metal. No, we have these fins here
that are actually structural and they are, yeah, what
takes the hit, let's say and absorbs the energy. They crumble upon crash
like a Formula 1 nose cone. It's an idea that came to
us when we made the Bolide. The Bolide also has a carbon nose cone that has different thicknesses of carbon laminated into them. So the more it crashes, the
more resistance it offers. So, and this is also the patent here, the carbon structures inside of this. So this is the carbon skin let's say, but there is a structural piece underneath that bonds to the frame and
this is what takes the hit and this is what enables
us to not need a beam here. And this is again what enables us to pull the diffuser channels up so high. You can see they are knee high and if you imagine the
trailing edge of the diffuser and the trailing edge of the wing, you can see how close we
brought them together. It's very close to the aerodynamic ideal of a drop shape, no? And so the maximum
angle that we could find that you could make a diffuser rise before you get get tear
offs is about 11 degrees. Anything beyond that you get tear offs and then it becomes inefficient. So if you have that,
you want those to be... Those channels to be as long as you can. So those channels are now two meters long. - [Henry] Wow.
- You basically start right under the seat, that's
how far they reach forward and that's the beauty of this project, 'cause it's very rare that you can draw up from the white page down into the very bits and pieces of architecture of the
car, something like this- - And as I understand,
it's quite difficult with carbon crash structures because you have to avoid
the material sort of, effectively, sort of going
into the crash structure and hardening as it goes in, so- - Yeah, to simulate how
they behave upon crumble is really the expertise
here and to make... To laminate those that they
repetitively in any part, perform the same.
- Yeah. - This is exactly the challenge and we've managed to do that on this car- - And we look under here,
we've obviously got, you can see one of the lower
wishbones and it all... The thing about underneath this again, you've got 3D printed aluminum wishbone. - Yes. - That's obviously an airfoil shape, which looks like it's
in the angle of kind of, the air flow through.
- Yeah. - Is that...
- We've... So it's an airfoil shape, exactly. - Yeah. - And it's even pitched at the right angle to flow with the
directional flow of the air, which is another thing so to
further energize the diffuser, we have incorporated the exhaust tips right at the trailing edge
of the diffuser channel. Why have we done that? Is because at top speeds, it's a naturally aspirated
9,000 RPM 8.3 liter. It's basically like a giant air pipe- - [Henry] That's a lot coming outta that. - And the air mass flow out of
these exhausts is substantial and it actually accelerates the air that comes from the diffuser. So it enhances the suction
effect of the diffuser and all of that together,
enables us to keep the wing in. We don't need the wing anymore for that. So the interplay between this
little ducktail tear off edge and the diffuser channels. - Which makes you very happy because it all looks very sleek. - And that's good again, for the design. And this is what I was saying,
it's always this interplay. That's why all we also
we regard let's say, the development team as one team. It's not like, okay,
there's the design team and there's the engineering team and yes, there are different
interests but we like to regard our group of development
people as one group. (powerful music) - Now, I promised I would come
back to the name, Tourbillon. It's French for whirlwind, but what makes it interesting to me is that it's most commonly
heard around the world in association with watchmaking. This little spinning heart
in here is a tourbillon, it was invented in 1795
by Abraham-Louis Breguet. And the idea is that the escapement, the balance wheel and the balance spring are all housed in a little rotating cage. What that does, is negates
the effects of gravity on all the parts within it that sort of balances it out I suppose, which is important if you're in a... Got in a pocket watch and it's hanging from a chain like that. The idea was to obviously improve the accuracy of the timekeeping. It makes less sense
actually in a wrist watch, which is obviously moving
around on your wrist all the time like that anyway. But nonetheless it is
revered as a beautiful and skillful piece of watchmaking. (powerful electronic music) Why all this talk of watchmaking? Well, I think it becomes pretty clear when you look inside and
you see these dials here, which even have, actually look down here, it says Horlogerie Suisse on them. They talk as well about the
skeletization of these dials, which is something you
talk about in watchmaking when they expose the
movement behind a dial and they are absolutely stunning. These are mechanical needles so you can see the gears
behind working away and they had to work really hard. They took sort of learnings
from the medical industry in fact, to get these
needle to react quickly. I imagine obviously, all that instant talk from electric motors and
to be able to show that, it has to move very quickly
like a flyback chronograph or something like that. The dials are made mostly from titanium, have over 600 parts, and
are built to tolerances as low as five microns. You can even see the
jewels used for bearings just like in a watch movement. Other things to mention here, well obviously we've got this
wheel which now moves around essentially like that,
this all remains fixed. And talking fixed, this seat remains fixed in terms of fore and aft movement. It will still move up and down and obviously the back reclines like that, but the pedals move and obviously, the steering wheel moves as well so that's how you get
comfy and they've done that because it means they can take
out the runners underneath, get the seat that bit lower to move in with this
obviously lower roof line we were talking about before, 33 millimeters lower than the Chiron. Glass, that's quite important here. We've got sapphire glass in here and then we've got crystal glass in here. That's all machined from one big block, which is, as you can imagine,
pretty complicated to do and had to be sort of done
in a certain way that... So if you are in a crash,
obviously, it didn't shatter and become dangerous in the car. You'll also notice,
really no screens in here. There is one for the Apple
CarPlay and that sort of thing, but it's hidden away so
they want this to be analog, not digi-analog I suppose. And all buying into that whole
sort of timelessness idea. It's worth saying as well that this is something
Bugatti's done really well in terms of the tactility. So I'm expecting that to be on perhaps an even greater level than before. I think it was really
particularly in Veyron, you notice that that was a very pure car in terms of its interior
and actually sort of, this is almost an extension of that, just taking it to the next level. (intriguing electronic music) Just 250 Tourbillon's will be built and despite deliveries
not starting until 2026, all of the cars have already been sold. Clearly, people aren't
concerned that it's a bit slow. I said I would come back to
the performance figures on this because they haven't been
trumpeted in quite the same way as we've been used to with
the Veyron and the Chiron. They're still mind blowing, naught to a hundred kilometers an hour, 62 miles an hour in two seconds. That's just bonkers. But as we all know, electric cars, including this car's cousin,
the Nevera, will beat that. In fact, it looks like the Nevera will pip the Bugatti at
every accelerative increment up to 400 kilometers an
hour or 248 miles an hour. A speed that the Tourbillon
will reach over seven seconds faster than the Chiron. The Tourbillon's top
speed of 276 miles an hour is faster than the 1,887
brake horsepower Rimac. But Bugatti doesn't even seem to be making much of a thing of that, probably because, well, it's not as fast as the limited edition
Chiron Super Sport 300+. No longer is performance
the primary selling point with this new Bugatti. And I think that's because we're at a crossroads for supercars, akin to the quartz crisis experienced by the watch
industry in the 1970s. You see with the advent
of the quartz movement, accurate timekeeping was
suddenly easy and cheap. Great companies like Ulysse Nardin, founded in Switzerland in 1846 supplied the US Navy with
fantastic marine chronometers, and they were suddenly left floundering. What was the point of their wonderfully accurate mechanical movements? But here we are today, and such companies are very successful. People love looking at things like this amazing
carousel movement in here or turning the watches over to see the (Henry speaking in French) the fantastic finishing on the movements. And I think that the supercar market is going through something
of its own quartz crisis. No longer are power and performance the sole objectives of these cars because EVs have kind of made
that, well, null and void. So what to do? Well, supercars need to double down on other aspects of what
make them so special. Things like fantastic sounding,
naturally aspirated engines and well, the mechanical engineering that is wonderful to look at. Given that, I think they can be successful just as this needs to
keep time accurately. Yes, the supercar needs
to have performance but no longer, I think, will it be the... (Henry speaking in French) That's what I think Bugatti, previously the bastion of high-power, high performance hypercar is now saying with this new car called Tourbillon. (powerful inspiring music)
