The Bugatti Centodieci is a Chiron-based EB110 tribute
With its extreme wedge shape and nest of circular air inlets it looked like nothing else, was powered by a quad turbo V12, and was the fastest cars of its day with a top speed of 218mph. The Bugatti EB110 was Bugatti’s first modern-era supercar and now, 28 years later, its spirit – and round air inlets – lives on in the form of Bugatti’s newest model, the Centodieci.
Unveiled at the weekend at Pebble Beach in California, the latest hypercar from Molsheim is all Chiron underneath but with a thoroughly reworked body that pays homage to its oft-underappreciated forebear and the role it played in putting Bugatti back on the supercar map.
The EB110 was launched in 1991 with much fanfare on the 110th anniversary of Ettore Bugatti’s birth. It was the first new Bugatti in 35 years. The driving force behind the venture was Italian car collector and businessman Romano Artioli.
Artiolli’s fledgling company managed to build 118 of the Marcello Gandini-designed 550bhp supercars before things went awry in 1995. But the Bugatti comeback bug was sown and three years later under VW group ownership and first the Veyron and now the Chiron, Bugatti has gone on to dominate the hypercar landscape.
If you thought the Chiron was rare and expensive enough already, the Centodieci – the name is Italian for one hundred and 10 – sets a new benchmark for exclusivity. Just 10 are being made available at a cost of almost £9 million each, including the tax.
In most ways it delivers what any Chiron delivers: 8.0-litre, quad-turbocharged, W16 engine, 1,600PS (1,578bhp), seven-speed DSG gearbox and all-wheel-drive. By far the biggest change over the Chiron is the look.
With its distinctive headlight slits, dramatic wedge profile, those round air inlets and absence of the latterday Bugatti C-line design signature around the B-pillar, it is immediately obvious what the Centodieci is paying tribute to.
The windscreen is a fighter jet-style wrapround affair and at the rear there’s a fixed rear wing, as used by the EB110 SS, above a row of eight chunky rear lights and stacked quad exhaust pipes. All told, there’s no way you could mistake this for “just” a Chiron.
Bugatti says the design provides an additional 90kg of downforce at speed and the car weighs in at 20kg less than the Chiron. Performance is quoted as 0-62mph in 2.4 seconds, 0-124mph in 6.1 seconds, 0-186mph in 13.1 seconds, and a top speed electronically limited to 236mph. Bugatti has yet to quote a top speed for a Chiron let fully off the leash.
And the EB110 all those years ago? With a third the power (but rather less weight) the carbon monocoque machine could get from 0-62mph in 3.2 seconds on its way to its (then) record top seed of 218mph.
The Centodieci follows in the footsteps of the Divo and La Voiture Noire and signals an increasing swing towards limited availability special-bodied cars for the Bugatti faithful.
Bugatti
Chiron
EB110
Centodieci
