Are cars too powerful? Here's what Koenigsegg, Bugatti-Rimac and Singer bosses say

You’d imagine the makers of the world’s quickest cars would always thirst for MOAR POWAAH. But is that the case? At Top Gear’s latest Boss Chat, we asked Bugatti-Rimac CEO Mate Rimac, Koenigsegg founder Christian von Koenigsegg and Singer supremo Rob Dickinson just that.

“Well, I love both sides,” said Mate Rimac. “On one side you have the Nevera with 2,000 horsepower and enthusiasts will say, ‘it's too heavy, you don't need that'. Yeah, I agree.

“You can have a super light and fun and nimble car, but having 2,000 horsepower also gives you some mind-blowing performance. I call it teleportation! You just point where you want to go and in three seconds you are there no matter where it is, if you want to overtake a car or something like that. It's just mental what the car can do.

Image: Mark Riccioni

“But I also love nimble light cars like the Singer we were driving today. And yes, I'm thinking about how we could make some really fun and light cars. So absolutely yes to both.”

Rob Dickinson, fresh from his first ever drives in a W16 Bugatti and Koenigsegg found the 2,000bhp Rimac had made quite the impression: “The world's a better place for all of this stuff – they're thrilling. I think you can argue that perhaps electric cars have a high level of manipulation, but we [Singer] have manipulated the s*** out of the Porsche 911!

“It's engineering and it's vision and it's ambition and it's focus, whether it's electrically motivated. I'm a big fan of electric cars actually. I've got an electric Porsche Macan, which I love, but I also love something that makes a lot of noise and smells a bit as well.”

So, what about current 0-400kph-0 record holder Mr von Koenigsegg?

“When I experienced the Nevera today, my first reaction was really it is ‘correct-powered’," said Christian. “It's not too much, it's not too little. Could it take more perhaps? I don't know. But on this relatively small track, you can use all of the power several times in a very controlled fashion and it doesn't feel scary.”

So, did he miss that hit of acceleration when wrestling the analogue Singer DLS with a quarter of the grunt (but half the weight)?

“In the Singer, could it take more power? I'm sure it can take a lot more power. Did I feel I needed more than 500 horsepower? Absolutely not. I drive a Mazda MX-5 to work several days a week. It's [been] my car since I was 19, and it has zero power. But it's just like a comfortable slipper.

“It's not about 3,000 horsepower or a hundred, it's what can a car take and how can you deploy it, how safe does it feel, and how controllable have we made it?

“And then of course, you have all the other layers on top of the emotions, the sounds, chassis, suspension, feedback, steering, that all comes to play.

“It was just super exciting today to experience the polar opposites: the super analogue Singer and the super tech in the Nevera, how they both felt super exciting in completely different ways, but still in the current, from a current enthusiast perspective, you can be equally excited.”

So, as long as there are tyres that can put mega horsepower figures onto the road, transmissions that don’t curl up into a ball when they’re asked to juggle it – or e-motors that stay cool when leaping to warp mode – then we can expect the likes of Mate and Christian to continue pushing the limits of what’s possible power-wise in a street-legal car…