Bugatti unveils the Mistral hypercar as it bids goodbye to its legendary 8.0 litre W16 engine

Bugatti has revealed its new W16 Mistral hypercar which is a roadster and is based on the Chiron at the Monterey Car Week. With the Mistral, Bugatti marks the end of an era and joins other hypercar and supercar makers to ditch pure ICE drivetrains. The Mistral will be the last of the Bugattis to come with the iconic W16 engine. After this, all upcoming engines will have some hybrid battery support, before the ICE is completely phased out in favour of high-performance EVs.

It truly is the end of an era. For its swansong, the W16 engine that Bugatti used in the Mistral is the same spec as the Chiron Super Sport 300+, arguably, the fastest production car in the world. The world first saw the glory of this engine with the Veyron, when Bugatti came almost out of nowhere and broke land speed records, one after the other.

Bugatti insists that the Mistral is not just a typical roadster version of the Chiron, but rather a new car with a tweaked monocoque and a fresh design.

The Bugatti W16 Mistral is a swansong for the 8.0-litre, quad-turbo W16 engine, and is tuned to match the 1,600hp version that powered the Chiron Super Sport 300+ to a record-breaking 490kph in 2019. Bugatti has indicated that it intends the Mistral to become the world’s fastest roadster, a record currently held by the 427kph Hennessey Venom GT Spyder.

As sleek and cutting edge as the design of the Mistral is, a lot of the elements and creases that we see on the car are not merely for aesthetics, but aerodynamics. The design of the W16 Mistral is inspired by the 1934 Bugatti Type 57 Roadster Grand Raid. Some of the design elements of the W16 Mistral look like a hybrid of La Voiture Noire and Divo, but in the form of a roadster.

In quintessential Bugatti fashion, the Mistral is an expensive-looking machine. At the front, the Mistral gets distinctive headlights with four vertically stacked LEDs, and the iconic horseshoe grille, which has been widened and made to look deeper. The Mistral also gets a distinctive wrap-around windscreen which blends into the side windows, similar to the La Voiture Noire, giving the roadster a unique look and creating a “visor effect”, according to Bugatti.

At the rear, the tail lamps look nothing like someone has ever seen on a production car. They form a huge ‘X’ with Bugatti written in the centre. A similar design can be seen on the Bugatti Bolide.

The interior is almost identical to the standard Chiron, but with a special gear shifter milled from a solid block of aluminium, featuring subtle wood accents and an amber insert containing a dancing elephant sculpture – the hood ornament used on the Bugatti Type 41 Royale. This can be customised to hold anything the customer chooses.

It is expected that the next launch from the manufacturer will be its new hypercar which has already been under development for the past two and a half years. It is being co-developed with Rimac. Mate Rimac, founder of Rimac said, “I would say it’s going in the opposite direction of what everybody expects,”. So, Bugatti might be going hybrid finally. Although, nothing is officially confirmed yet.