The Chiron Super Sport makes more power than Bugatti expected

This, ladies and gentlemen of the Internet, is a 273mph Bugatti Chiron Super Sport tied to a very heavy-duty dyno. Shades of Frankenstein’s Monster strapped to the operating table, aren’t there?

Anyway, Bugatti recently tethered its own monster to the dynamometer to check how much power the 8.0-litre W16 engine was producing. It had previously quoted a not insignificant 1,578bhp, but recent tests show that it’s more like 1,595bhp. That’s more like it…

The dyno itself is a very interesting piece of kit, too. Bugatti describes it as a ‘high-performance all-wheel single-roller dynamometer’, which essentially means the car’s wheel runs on one large roller rather than the usual two. The wheel’s ‘rolling behaviour’ is closer to how it would be on the road as a result, and the tyres produce less heat than they would between two small rollers. That means you can test up to higher speeds, with Bugatti’s dyno allowing for 480kph (298mph). Lucky the road-going Super Sport is limited to 273mph then, isn’t it?

Each roller set weighs 3.5 tonnes and the fan to cool the car is four-metres tall. It can shift 300,000 cubic metres of air an hour and generates an airstream of up to 230kph (143mph). There’s a special fastening system to test the Super Sport too, with a mix of high-strength screws bolted to the carbon monocoque, ‘crisscrossing strong chains’ and special straps. Sounds scary.