Bugatti is a savage.
In 2020, it released the Chiron Pur Sport: a 1,500 PS automotive tour de force designed to pummel lesser machinery—a Porsche 911 GT3, for instance—into pieces of pulp around a racetrack. To this end, the Pur Sport featured lightweight magnesium wheels, shorter gear ratios to improve acceleration—0-100km/h took just 2.3 seconds—and tweaked aerodynamics to squash the Pur Sport into the tarmac at speed. Essentially, it was a Chiron turned up to eleven.
There is no denying that the Pur Sport was an incredible feat of engineering, however, it looked positively jarring—not least because it had a six-foot-wide picnic table perched on the rear—and was a little too loutish for some of Bugatti’s more, let’s say, mature clientele. These cultured customers requested Bugatti for a car that combined the Pur Sports technical prowess with a more refined, elegant design. The end result is the Chiron Profilée. The last of the Chiron breed.
That looks delicious.
Doesn’t it just? The most obvious change compared to the Pur Sport is the Profilée’s bespoke, sweeping tail that replaces the Pur Sport’s yob-tastic wing. The Profilée’s tail carries out two functions: it not only produces 80 per cent of the Pur Sport’s downforce, but it also uses negative pressure to usher hot air out of the engine compartment via two interior tunnels in the high-temperature carbon wing. Most importantly though, it looks brilliant.
Among other changes, the Profilée boasts wider air inlets and an enlarged Bugatti horseshoe grille to help funnel more cooling air into the radiators, 15 per cent shorter transmission ratios than the Chiron Sport (another Chiron model), springs that are ten per cent stiffer compared with the Chiron Sport and a rear axle that carries 50 per cent more negative camber.
How fast is it?
Very.
Where the Pur Sport maxes out at a measly 350km/h, the more svelte Profilée is capable of reaching a top speed of 380km/h.
Bugatti’s acceleration claims for the Profilée are equally as discombobulating. Apparently, the Profilée will launch from 0 to 100km/h in just 2.3 seconds and will cross 200km/h in 5.5 seconds.
So, why is Bugatti “a savage”?
Because they’re only making one Profilée.
Only one?! Why?
At the start of the Chiron’s production run, Bugatti swore they would only make 500 Chirons. And because they sold more Pur Sports than they anticipated, they only have space to build one more Chiron: the Profilée.
Remember, this is the car Bugatti’s customers demanded they make. It’s arguably the most desirable Chiron ever produced. And Bugatti’s billionaire customers are going to have to enter into a bidding war to get it. These people are not used to hearing the word “no.”
