How The Chiron Pur Sport Is The Most Athletic Bugatti Ever

Bugatti's engineers left nothing on the table.

If you pull in more than a million annually and you find the Bugatti Chiron just a bit too "tame," the Chiron Pur Sport might be for you. The $3.6-million supercar packs the same 1,500-horsepower wallop as the regular Chiron, but it couples that brute force with shorter gear ratios for even more blistering acceleration, and enhanced cornering ability via a full suite of handling upgrades

To make the Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport corner like it's on rails, Bugatti's engineers gave the supercar additional negative camber - a total of 2.5 degrees - at each wheel, necessitating the creation of all-new suspension joints. New, stiffer springs - 950 lb/in up front, and 1,140 lb/in at the rear - replace the Chiron's original 570 lb/in front and 855 lb/in rear pieces for tighter body control in the corners.

"The significantly harder springs offer the best compromise between sporty handling, traction and ride comfort for the Chiron Pur Sport," explains Bugatti's Head of Chassis Development, Jachin Schwalbe. "It took us many, many test kilometres to arrive at this conclusion."

He's not joking; according to Bugatti, the Chiron has now covered well over a million test kilometers in total. Insights gained over such a long stretch helped drive other changes to the chassis, such as uprated bearings where the struts attach to the body, 2.3 times stiffer than the old bearings at the front, and 1.7 times stiffer at the rear. That's had the effect of making the chassis much more communicative.

"The driver knows in advance exactly where the Chiron Pur Sport is going," Schwalbe says, lending it extraordinary "precision and predictability."

"Only minimum steering movement is required" to change direction, he says.

New tires - Michelin Sport Cup 2 Rs developed exclusively for Bugatti - feature a special tire structure and softer rubber compound optimized for the Pur Sport's unique chassis, delivering 10-percent more lateral acceleration. Those tires are wrapped around lightweight magnesium rims with optional Aero blades that extract air from the wheel arches to increase downforce and improve aerodynamics, while the rear of the car wears a larger, longer diffuser and a fixed rear wing measuring six-and-a-quarter feet in length.

Those aerodynamic modifications are supplemented by an upsized front splitter, wider front air intakes, wheel arch ventilation, and a lower overall height, all of which enhances the Pur Sport's physics-defying lateral acceleration.

Altogether, the complete Pur Sport treatment contributes to dramatically improved handling, at the expense of some top speed; the more cornering-friendly Chiron is limited to "just" 217 miles per hour. But all things considered, that's a relatively small price to pay for such a brilliantly optimized machine - much smaller than the $3.6-million price tag. Ouch.

Final tuning of the Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport is now underway, and the car will begin series production in the second half of 2020.