Gawp at the Bugatti Tourbillon’s bare, naked chassis

Using basic TopGear.com engineering principles, building a hypercar appears to be extremely easy. Take one massive engine. Bolt it into a go kart. Fit some fancy dampers. A steering wheel. Some seats and a roof, and wahey! 300mph, here we come.

Turns out, it’s a bit more complicated than that. As this teardown of the Bugatti Tourbillon quite clearly shows. Despite serving it well for two decades, the bones underpinning the Veyron and Chiron – both record-breaking speed machines – were riddled with arthritis.

Bugatti needed something younger, fitter, stronger and more able to out-accelerate those old guns and that terrible analogy, so went back to the drawing board and sketched out an entirely new platform for the Tourbillon. Not least because this next-gen speed machine required one massive engine… and lots of electricity.

You know the Tourbillon’s got a V16. You also know it’s got three electric motors. What you might not know is such force requires a total of eight radiators, five of which sit in the front of the car. Two of these are for the engine alone, while the other three in the middle direct air into the cabin and onto the electricity.

Said electricity requires many batteries, and these have been injected into the Tourbillon’s bones like Wolverine’s adamantium. Just with less snikety claws. It’s a T-shaped unit, good for 24kWh, and able to power the Tourbillon on electrons alone for 37 miles.

That battery powers two e-motors mounted on the front axle, and a third e-motor on the rear (that pairs up with the V16). Smash everything together and you've got the scary end of 1,775bhp.

“The Tourbillon is a statement of intent,” said the hypercar maker. “The platform on which it is built marks a new chapter for Bugatti, one defined by unprecedented levels of optimisation and performance.

“As Bugatti moves into its next era, this platform will remain fundamental to everything the brand does from now on.”

Does that mean… 300mph?