Brothers, the neck brother is a little floating today, and I want to talk to you about Bugatti's new car: the Tourbillon.
The original meaning of this word is actually the tourbillon in the watch. It can correct the timing error of the mechanical structure by gravity, so that the watch can move more accurately. There are also disadvantages, that is, it is difficult and expensive, and generally only the top mechanical watch brands are willing to use it.
Bugatti's tourbillon costs 3.8 million euros in the European market, and 50 million in the country plus various taxes. Therefore, I don't think there is any need to detail this car. All you need to know is that everything it uses is the best it is right now.
What I want to share with you is actually the story behind the birth of this car.
Interestingly, this top-of-the-line sports car with a V-16 cylinder layout and a naturally aspirated engine was actually made by an electric car enthusiast.
Back in 2020, Bugatti was planning to make the next generation of the Chiron an all-electric version because its parent company, the Volkswagen Group, was moving to electrification.
But back then, companies that had engaged in high-performance electric supercars could be counted on one hand. After all, this kind of niche model was expensive and weak back then, and no one wanted to do it.
If you look at the all-electric Mercedes-Benz SLS, it uses four motors to have less than 800 horsepower, 000 acceleration in 3.9 seconds, and a range of 200 kilometers. The performance is not much different from the fuel version, but the price has increased by more than N times.
So even if there were, most of the pure electric supercars of the year were also used as gimmicks, and basically no one planned to actually mass produce.
However, there is such a small brand in Croatia called Rimac, which seems to be particularly interested in building pure electric supercars.
Back in 2011, they released their first all-electric supercar, the Concept One, with four motors and a maximum horsepower of 1,224 hp, a 000 in less than 3 seconds, and even a range of 600 kilometers.
Brothers who have seen the Three Musketeers of Top Gear should know that this is the car that Mole overturned in The Grand Tour back then.
And in 2018, Rimac got their second car, the Nevara, which was even more explosive than the Concept One. It's still a four-motor, but it has nearly 2,000 horsepower, a 1.85-second 000-to-100 acceleration time, and a top speed of 415 km/h, making it one of the fastest supercars on the planet.
And it's not just the product that's awesome, Rimac's owner, Mate Ricmac, who's just going to call him Matt, is almost a natural genius for electric drive.
At the age of 17, he dismantled all the powertrains of a BMW 3 Series and replaced it with an all-electric form of his own design. As soon as he saw the oil to electricity, others laughed at him and said that he had built a drum washing machine.
As a result, this washing machine has overcome obstacles in various races, and has also set many FIA records, and even Guinness World Records.
At the time of building the mole happy car in front, Matt was only 23 years old, and the electric drive and electronic control system on the car were also designed and developed by Matt and his team.
In the years that followed, the likes of Aston · Brands such as Martin, Porsche and even Koenigsegg have approached Matt to provide technical and hardware support for their electric drive systems for their high-performance models.
It can be said that on this planet, Matt is almost the one who knows the most about high-performance electric drives.
Speaking of Bugatti's successor model to the Chiron, the time was around the beginning of 2020, when the Volkswagen Group looked at WOC, Matt, a young man who was engaged in electric drive and supercar, was not exactly the same as the model we wanted to make!
So they contacted Matt and asked him to go to Bugatti to talk and give some advice.
According to interviews with foreign media, Matt didn't actually have any preparations at the time, so he went after getting some information or something. As a result, it didn't matter, and it was directly happy for Bugatti's executives.
At that time, I said to Matt, why don't you become the CEO of Bugatti?
Matt let out a sigh when he heard this: Huh?
Didn't you say yes just to give advice? He thought he had misheard, and he didn't feel at ease. As a result, a few months later, a Volkswagen executive contacted him again and asked him if he had thought about it, and he realized, woc you are really here...
Matt: Wang Defa?
So in July 2021, a joint venture between Bugatti and Rimac was set up with the goal of bringing out the new energy successor of the Chiron. Matt is the leader of the whole team.
And here, the most dramatic part comes.
After researching the Bugatti brand and the technology of his own Rimac, Matt told the Volkswagen Group before the project started that he didn't think Bugatti should use an electric car as its flagship.
The reason is simple: all of Bugatti's classics, including the earliest 57 and later EB110 and Veyron, are models that can still be seen decades later.
This cannot be done by pure electric models, because the iteration of electric drive and electronic control is too fast, and the performance of the battery pack will deteriorate due to the passage of time. Matt's idea is to make a hybrid model with both top-of-the-line fuel and electric power, taking into account the heritage of gasoline cars and the powerful performance of electric cars.
This embarrassed the Volkswagen Group.,It's not the pigeons.,Why did you regret it just after the program folder was built.。。。
So he began to diss Matt's ideas for a long time and with high frequency.
For example, Porsche said, we have built hybrid supercars, 918 Spyder, you forgot, and the final effect is not good. Moreover, the hybrid supercar has an engine, an engine, and a battery motor, and the weight is not easy to solve.
Give up, young man!
But Matt just won't change his death, "Now that you've found me, you have to believe me."
The public can't see it, and the restrictions on the complete ban on the sale of fuel vehicles in Europe have been relaxed.
And when the Bugatti Tourbillon was officially released a few months ago, everyone was dumbfounded.
After all, on this car, the powerful electric drive is only a very small part, and the innumerable, meticulous engineering design is its biggest highlight.
To name a few, the Tourbillon's steering wheel and instrument panel have a centrally fixed design. And this triplet really looks like a watch with a tourbillon, with a sophisticated and complex gear structure, even encrusted with rubies.
What's even more unfortunate is that in order to make this instrument, Matt also went to Switzerland to find a brand cooperation that provides technical support for top watches. So, these gears are really working with the pointers on the gauge, real mechanical parts.
Another example is the engine of this car, which is a never-before-seen V16 engine. With a displacement of 8.3L and naturally aspirated, this engine was built by Matt and Cosworth together, and the maximum horsepower is over 1000 hp.
And the reason why he chose the self-priming V16 is because Matt thinks that the oil car should be self-priming, although the turbo is strong but there will be power lag, not pure enough, and its own electric drive system can make up for the shortcomings of the turbo, so it is simply not used.
The second is that this elongated layout can bring a lot of benefits to the Tourbillon's aerodynamic layout, because to get enough downforce, the venturi channel under the rear diffuser (a structure that allows airflow to pass under the car and prevents the car from flying like airplane wings) has to be very long.
The slender engine allows two long pipes to slip in from either side, allowing the Tourbillon to get enough downforce without opening the rear wing.
Then there are some mechanical designs that are perverted to the extreme, for example, Matt thinks that this car must be the same as a high-end watch, even if it is invisible, it must be elegant and good-looking.
So after removing all the coverings, the internal structure of the Tourbillon is like this.
It's as beautiful as a sculpture.
Another example is this 3D-printed suspension rocker arm, as well as the center console panel polished from a whole piece of natural crystal, which is also beautiful one by one.
The funniest thing is that Matt himself is obviously from a tram, but he hates the big screens that are full of cars now, and he thinks that this design is very easy to become outdated. So in Tourbillon's car, he only put such a small retractable screen to watch the reversing video and Carplay.
It's kind of a feeling that you don't use it when you need it.,If you can't use it.。。。
All of this adds up to a tourbillon that transforms into a supercar full of mechanical beauty and new energy technology.
Moreover, it breaks Porsche's doubts about the weight of hybrid vehicles. This tourbillon with a three-motor hybrid system is likely to be even lighter than its predecessor, the Chiron.
So it's no surprise that the Tourbillon was immediately well-received, and various media critics also praised it. Colleagues and investors who were worried that Matt would fool around were also relieved and said to him, "You did the right thing."
So there are also many people who evaluate Matt as saying that he knows Bugatti better than the public.
I don't know how everyone feels after reading this story, Brother Neck is really emotional after understanding the complete process.
Because the car companies around us, and even most of the car companies around the world, are in order to make a profit and survive the volume price, volume configuration. Although this line of thinking is understandable, it also makes it difficult for new cars to surprise people.
And after Matt made the Tourbillon, I realized that there are still people who can work hard for the seemingly meaningless "mechanical beauty" and the accumulation of fuel vehicles.
It turns out that after new energy has made power cheaper, there is still a supercar that can give me the feeling of seeing a Ferrari 430 for the first time when I was a child.
Matt said at the press conference that he wants the Tourbillon to be a sports car that children want to hang on the wall, and I think there should be no suspense.