Video: flat-out in the £3.5m Bugatti Bolide

The track-only Bugatti Bolide is deranged. Because as its starting point the Bolide doesn’t take some lithe and lightweight little powertrain, but Bugatti’s juggernaut of an engine – the infamous 1,578bhp 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16.

It’s arguably the world’s greatest hypercar powertrain, and in the Bolide it’s strapped to a true racing car chassis, an entirely new carbon monocoque built to FIA safety requirements.

The mad engine and unique chassis are then clothed in bespoke carbon body panels, which look knee-tremblingly good and generate almost three tonnes of downforce at the Bolide’s top speed. Which is 227mph in the high-downforce setting.

Bugatti is building only 40 Bolides, they’ll cost £3.5m each, and Top Gear is the first to experience it in full flight, besides chief test driver (and Le Mans winner) Andy Wallace... 

Over to Top Gear Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jack Rix, who tries not to be sick in the passenger footwell.