Hypercars are all about numbers, and those that the Bugatti Chiron generates are staggering

Hypercars are all about numbers, and those that the Bugatti Chiron generates are staggering. Sixteen cylinders, four turbos and up to 304mph, Bugatti has remained right at the cutting edge of performance car engineering with the Veyron’s successor, which blew us away when we drove it in 1578bhp Super Sport guise for issue 307 of the magazine.

‘You can push and sometimes even party a bit with the Chiron, and it doesn’t bite, doesn’t get wild’, said Steve Sutcliffe. ‘Instead it flows from corner to corner on a tsunami of torque and poise, its thunderous sequentially turbocharged W16 engine providing you with a constant source of temptation. It will fire you out of any corner and down any straight with three times more energy than you’ll ever need, or sometimes even want.’

This sense of excess defines most hypercars, but especially the Chiron Super Sport. It dispatches 0-62mph in 2.4sec before smashing through 124mph less than four seconds later. Blend this with a fully adaptive chassis and it has an unexpected level of agility, with more connection through the steering than the Veyron could ever muster. The overriding impression is of speed and pure unadulterated performance, with our only gripe being that there’s hardly anywhere on the planet you can meaningfully exploit its potential.