£5m Bugatti Mistral guns for crown of fastest roadster on the planet

The battle to build the fastest roadster on the planet is heating up with Bugatti unveiling its latest model, called the Mistral.

It’s an open-top version of its stupendous Chiron hypercar, meaning it gets the same mammoth 16-cylinder, quad-turbocharged engine, thoroughbred all-wheel-drive system, gob-smacking design and interior opulence.

Bugatti bosses say it has only one goal in mind: ‘to become the fastest roadster in the world once more.’ 

But it faces stiff competition from US brand Hennessey, which has also just unveiled a roofless Venom F5, which it says will be the fastest and most powerful roadster on sale.

The Chiron’s predecessor, the Veyron, was available as an open-top alternative, named the Grand Sport. But until today there has not been a wind-in-the-hair variant of the Chiron, which launched back in 2016. 

The £1.68million Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse briefly held claim to being the fastest roadster available to the paying public, clocking a verified top speed of 408.84kmh (254mph) in 2013.

However, that accolade lasted only three years when the Hennessey Venom GT Spyder posted a staggering 265.6mph in 2016 – a record that still stands today.

Bugatti says it wants the crown back – and the Mistral is the vehicle bidding to reclaim the throne.

As well as going for the outright roadster record, the French hypercar marque also confirmed it will be the last of its kind. 

It said Mistral will ‘bring the W16 era to an end’, being the last road-going car it launches to use the current 16-cylinder powerplant. 

But it says it will sign-off the incredible engine with a finale vehicle that is ‘exclusive, elegant and powerful’. 

Bosses say it must be ‘the very best of its kind’ and ‘the ultimate roadster’.

And it won’t be cheap. 

Prices start from €5million before local taxes (so £5million in the UK with VAT) and only 99 examples will be built.

It’s not the most expensive Bugatti sold to paying customers – it’s over £6million cheaper than the one-off La Voiture Noire launched in 2019, which cost a whopping £11.4million. 

First deliveries are due to begin in 2024 with every example already bought and paid for by Bugatti’s most dedicated customers who were shown the Mistral weeks ahead of its public unveiling.

Mate Rimac, Bugatti Rimac CEO, said: ‘For the final road-going appearance of Bugatti’s legendary W16 engine, we knew we had to create a roadster. 

‘Well over 40 per cent of all Bugatti vehicles ever created have been open-top in design, establishing a long lineage of performance icons that – to this day – are revered the world over. 

‘In the Chiron era there had, to-date, been no roadster, so the introduction of W16 Mistral continues this legacy, driven by enormous demand from our clients for an all-new way to experience the mighty performance of our iconic engine. 

‘The W16 Mistral opens the next chapter in the Bugatti roadster story, inspired by over a century of open top legends.’

Bugatti Mistral: What we know so far

‘Mistral’ shares its name with the powerful wind that blows through the picturesque Côte d’Azur in southern France and into the Mediterranean. 

It is powered by the most potent version of the W16 (essentially two V8 engines) quad-turbocharged 8.0-litre petrol engine that is used in the 304.77mph Chiron Super Sport 300+, which in 2019 claimed to have set an all-out record for a production car, only for Guinness World Records to later announce that it didn’t recognise the achievement because Bugatti had failed to follow the correct protocol for measuring top speed.

That means it should generate 1,578bhp and send that grunt to all four wheels.

In theory, it should be able to exceed the 300mph mark with the roof up, though there is no official word on its top speed until everything is verified. 

Bugatti says it will offer ‘performance unlike any open top car that has gone before’ but that might not be the case…

The Bugatti’s rival from the States 

That’s because US manufacturer Hennessey also plans to better its own roadster record with the unveiling earlier this week of the F5 Venom Roadster. 

While the Texas company’s open-top hypercar has only a twin-turbo V8 motor, it is claimed to produce a massive 1,817bhp – that’s 239 horses more than the Mistral, despite the latter having twice as many cylinders and less engine capacity. 

Hennessey says it expects the F5 Venom Roadster to exceed 300mph, though hasn’t confirmed how fast it will go flat out when its detachable roof is removed and the driver is exposed to the elements. 

Bosses at the American brand say its top speed will be verified around next year – which could create a mouth-watering competition with Bugatti, should the latter want to prove the Mistral is the outright record holder for a roof-down production machine.

 

Bugatti Mistral gets a helmet-visor windscreen and clever aero tech 

In terms of design, Bugatti says its new car is a ‘modern-day work of art’. 

It features a curved windscreen that wraps around the A-pillars like a helmet visor. 

The French brand says this is a ‘marvel of engineering’, with the huge piece of glass curved just enough to create the rounded shape without distorting the driver’s vision.

While much of the Chiron looks have been retained, they have been tweaked for the top-down variant.

It keeps the traditional horseshoe grille, though this is flanked by different headlights that are specifically shaped so that they funnel air through the vent above the cluster and out through the wheel arches to improve aerodynamic drag.

The oil cooler intakes on the side have been separated from the engine air intake, which now sit on the roof behind the occupant’s head, to cool the W16 motor but also achieve optimum airflow but also double as protection for the driver and passenger should the car roll over.

At the back is a new ‘X-taillight’ cluster that’s bespoke for the Mistral and also have a functional design to expel heat from the W16 engine efficiently.

Inside, the cabin is as glorious as you would expect from a £5million-plus hypercar, with all the switches milled from lightweight titanium, many of the components made from aluminium and the finest-grade leather.

‘What we continue with W16 Mistral is a legacy of Bugatti roadsters, each of them incomparable in design, performance and rarity, which stretches right back to the genesis of Bugatti,’ Mate Rimac added. 

‘The Type 40, Type 41 Royale, Type 55 Roadster, Type 57 Roadster Grand Raid that inspired this car, or even the incredible elegance of the Type 57 SC Corsica Roadster – Bugatti has always been associated with the purity of open top driving. 

‘So even though the legacy of the road-going W16 ends with the W16 Mistral, we continue the legacy of the roadster, first established by Ettore Bugatti more than a century ago.’