Sixteen years ago Bugatti launched the 987-hp Veyron, a car that pushed supercar performance to levels never seen before. With emissions regulations tightening, some people wondered whether this really was peak supercar.
It quickly became obvious it wasn’t. After turning the wick up on the Veyron to create the 1,184 hp Veyron Super Sport, Bugatti launched the Chiron in 2016. By this point the W16 was making 1,479 hp, or 50 per cent more power than the original Veyron.
I’ve been lucky enough to drive both the Veyron and the Chiron, but years apart, not together. On each occasion I can remember the air being crushed from my lungs when I sunk the right pedal, but don’t remember thinking that Chiron was on a different plane altogether.
But this video proves how my memory was clearly playing tricks on me when I drove the Chiron a decade after my original Veyron encounter. After the usual seven-minute preamble YouTube’s The Stradman lines his Veyron up against a Chiron on a Utah runway and is comprehensively smoked before his seven-speed DCT has even hooked its second ratio.
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Both cars make a lame drive-off getaway, that’s impossibly undramatic considering the combined horsepower on display, but from there, things get fun real quick. By 80mph the newer car has pulled out a lead of several car lengths, and as the Veyron hits the 150 mph (241 km/h) mark, around 13 seconds after leaving the line, the Chiron is nothing more than a cloud of dust in the distance.
The Stradman carries on to 192mph (309 km/h) before hitting the brakes, but for the last two thirds of the race he might as well have been driving by himself. According to Bugatti’s official figures the Veryon can bit 62 mph (100 km/h) in 2.5 seconds, 124 mph (200 km/h) in 7.3 seconds and 186 mph (300 km/h) in 16.7 seconds. The corresponding numbers for the Chiron are 2.4, 6.1 and 13.1 seconds. The Veyron is still a fast car, but it suddenly looks almost mortal after this encounter.