Well it has finally happened – the most popular motoring personality in the world has finally driven the most incredible car ever made. In his latest column for driving.co.uk, Jeremy Clarkson reveals his thoughts about driving the mighty Bugatti Chiron – a replacement for the Bugatti Veyron which he first drove some 12 years ago.
“I marvelled at the engineering in that car,” Clarkson writes. “It had 10 radiators to keep it cool — and reckoned that, because of the relentless war on speed and internal combustion, we would never see its like again. There just wouldn’t be the appetite to make a replacement. It would be just too difficult, not just politically, but also from an engineering standpoint.”
Thankfully, despite the odds and taking more than decade to do so, the £2.5m Bugatti Chiron is finally available – and while it might be packing the same 8-litre, quad-turbo W12 engine, it is a harder, faster and meaner than the Veyron ever was
“Last week I drove the Chiron, not just for a couple of laps round a racetrack under the watchful gaze of a minder, but all the way from St Tropez to the border with Switzerland and then to Turin. I got to know it well and I still haven’t stopped fizzing,” Clarkson says. “The speed is beyond anything you can even possibly imagine.”
“There is nothing made by any mainstream car maker that could hold a candle to the Chiron. A McLaren P1 doesn’t even get close. It’s like comparing me as a drummer with Ginger Baker.” – Jeremy Clarkson
Despite the incredible speeds the Chiron is capable of, Clarkson maintains that it never difficult to drive – and at the same time poked fun at his accident-prone colleague Richard Hammond.
“It’s never difficult. Oh, I’m sure Richard Hammond could roll it down a hill, but for the rest of us it’s a doddle,” he wrote. “There are no histrionics. The exhaust system doesn’t pop and bang. The engine doesn’t shriek. There are no aural gimmicks at all. And everything you touch is either leather or metal. Unless it’s the badge. That’s sterling silver.”
So what did Clarkson think about it all at the end? “It’s not driving pleasure,” Clarkson says. “It’s not aesthetics. It’s just man looking at nature, rolling up his sleeves and saying: Do you want some?”
“This car doesn’t challenge the laws of physics. It bludgeons them. It is an engineering marvel, because like all other engineering marvels it’s an affront to God.”
Expect to see more of Clarkson and the Bugatti Chiron in Series 2 of The Grand Tour later this year.