The Bugatti W16 Mistral is the final outing for Bugatti’s W16 engine after 20 years in production.
It's a fitting end for an engine that made its debut in the 2005 Veyron, back when the Volkswagen Group had its hand on the tiller and Ferdinand Piëch’s decadent hubris had him setting new standards and breaking records that nobody else would ever be inclined to approach.
He wanted a car that was as easy to drive as a Volkswagen Golf, met or exceeded VW’s existing or newly created quality and durability standards and, at the same time, you could climb into at the start of one of the straights at VW’s Ehra-Lessien test track and be doing 253mph by the end of it.
He and his boffins specified a W16 engine to do it. Four banks of four cylinders, eight litres in total, four turbochargers and a four- figure horsepower number when such things were unheard of at the time. The Veyron’s W16 made 1001 metric horsepower – 987bhp – and it only went north from there.
Faster versions since have knocked off various round metric horsepower milestones to end up, here, with 1578bhp – a round 1600PS and the same as a Chiron Super Sport 300+.
