As the end of the Chiron’s output run nears, Bugatti is having a look back at the W16 engine that has driven its cars since it returned to the scene approximately 20 yrs ago. The engine is relatively compact, hugely effective, and it has helped the agency established quite a few world information.
Previous Volkswagen boss Ferdinand Karl Piëch understood that correctly reviving Bugatti needed building a motor vehicle that stood out from all the things else on the road at the time. He initially planned to electricity the then-upcoming Veyron with an 18-cylinder motor and sketched it out on an envelope when using on a substantial-speed coach from Tokyo to Osaka in Japan in 1997. His principle later turned a 16-cylinder engine, but dropping a pair of cylinders didn’t make the device easier to acquire. Bugatti engineers begun from scratch in order to make the W16 a actuality.
“We had to interact in primary improvement for each individual part every single car or truck aspect had to be manufactured anew and analyzed — even the engine test bench. The only factor we failed to change was the pencils we employed for drawing,” mentioned former Bugatti head of specialized enhancement Gregor Gries. The first intention was to start the Veyron with above 1,000 horsepower, and even some insiders doubted that this could be accomplished.
Bugatti pulled it off: The Veyron entered output in 2005 with a quad-turbocharged, 8.-liter W16 engine rated at 1,000 horsepower and 922 pound-ft of torque. Horsepower elevated to 1,200 in the Veyron Tremendous Activity, and the Chiron inaugurated a new model of the motor rated at 1,500 horsepower many thanks in aspect to even bigger turbos, however the Chiron Tremendous Sport features a 1,600-horsepower output.
Engineers faced several significant problems during the Veyron’s enhancement approach. Having the W16 to make 1,000 horsepower was not 1 it broke the symbolic barrier the first time it was set on a take a look at bench in 2001. Holding its temperature in examine needed coming up with a huge cooling technique that will take about 10 gallons of coolant and putting in a titanium exhaust technique. With the motor ready to go, Bugatti turned its interest to building a car able of coping with 1,000 horsepower, equally in terms of consolation and in conditions of aerodynamics.
“Again then, there was no literature or empirical knowledge for generation engines with far more than 12 cylinders or for output vehicles that could go more rapidly than 217 mph,” reported Karl-Heinz Neumann, Volkswagen’s previous head of motor development. “1 point proved to be a particular headache: the auto had to remain grounded, its power experienced to remain on the street, which just isn’t effortless at these speeds.”
Unsurprisingly, creating the Chiron’s W16 motor is a meticulous and time-consuming process. Bugatti points out that the engine is built in a special room inside the plant that Volkswagen operates in Salzgitter, Germany. Two professionals devote no fewer than 6 times assembling the 3,712 person parts that make up the engine. When it is concluded, the W16 is transported to the Bugatti plant in Molsheim, France.
What is actually subsequent? Your guess is as great as ours. Bugatti notes that the W16 is “the past of its sort,” which implies (but doesn’t affirm) that the stop is near for the engine. The business is now beneath the similar roof as Croatia-based mostly Rimac, but that will not suggest the Chiron’s successor will go electric powered. “[The car] will be heavily electrified, but we will have a quite beautiful combustion engine,” explained Mate Rimac in March 2022.
