New Bugatti Chiron Profilee revealed as potential farewell to the W16 engine

Bugatti is offering customers what could be the last chance to buy a new car featuring its iconic W16 engine. It has revealed the Chiron Profilée, a one-off that will sit outside of the production runs of the Chiron, Mistral and Bolide, all of which are sold out.

The Chiron Profilée was created during the design and development of the Chiron Pur Sport, the more extreme road-focused version of Bugatti's hypercar. Several customers asked if its technical enhancements could be offered in a vehicle with a more restrained, subtle look – but while Bugatti’s design team and engineers finished the project, strong sales of the Pur Sport accounted for all of the available build slots.

The Profilée risked being a stillborn creation, therefore – but now a pre-series prototype has been adapted to production specification and fully homologated as a standalone model. With Bugatti likely to adopt some form of electrification for its future models, the latest vehicle could well prove to be the last W16 model to be offered for sale.

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The new creation’s looks are inspired by Jean Bugatti’s ‘superprofilée shape’, as featured on the Type 46 and Type 50. The most significant change comes at the rear, where the enormous fixed wing of the Pur Sport has been replaced by a more swooping tail. Bugatti’s deputy design director Frank Heyl describes it as “a graceful and timeless shape”.

The underpinnings are shared with the Pur Sport, so the Profilée gets that car’s version of the W16, producing 1,479bhp, and its transmission specification, with gear ratios shortened by 15 per cent compared with the Chiron Sport. Bugatti says the Chiron Profilée can crack 0-62mph in 2.3 seconds and reach 124mph in 5.5 seconds. The more subtle, less downforce-oriented shape also improves its top speed, which rises from the Pur Sport’s 217mph, to 236mph.

The Chiron Profilée is finished in a unique shade of paint called Argent Atlantique, and the lower part of the bodywork is features exposed carbon fibre. The cabin, meanwhile, features a woven leather finish – a first in the Chiron – comprising more than 2.5km of leather strips.

Bugatti says that selecting a single customer who had requested the Profilée’s specification would prove troublesome, so the car will be auctioned to the highest bidder at an event in Paris on 1 February, after a period on display at the Louvre museum.

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