The End of an Extraordinary Era

📍 ‘The Bottom Line: After more than 20 years, 16 cylinders and an indecent quantity of horsepower, Bugatti’s W16 has finally left the building.’

 

The final W16-powered Mistral has rolled out of Molsheim, closing an era that began with the astonishing 1,001hp Veyron.

 

It was excessive, complicated and magnificently unnecessary.

 

Which, of course, is precisely why we shall miss it.

 

In 2005, the Bugatti Veyron arrived with numbers that sounded faintly ridiculous.

 

🚩 Sixteen cylinders. Four turbochargers. 1,001hp. More than 250mph.

 

This wasn’t so much a new supercar.

 

▪️As Ferdinand Piëch demonstrated what happened when an engineer was given Volkswagen’s cheque book and nobody was sufficiently brave to take it away.

 

▪️More than two decades later, the final Bugatti Mistral marks the end of that remarkable W16 dynasty.

 

▪️What followed the Veyron was extraordinary.

 

The Chiron pushed output to 1,500hp.

 

The Super Sport 300+ became the first production car to break the 300mph barrier.

 

And the Mistral transformed that formidable engineering into perhaps its most glamorous form: an open-top farewell.

 

▪️The W16 was never elegant in the conventional sense. It was enormously complex, expensive and required ten radiators to keep its enthusiasm under control.

 

▪️But that was rather the point.

 

▪️It represented an era when the question wasn’t ‘Do we need this?’

 

It was ‘Can we build it’

 

♔ Fisherley view: Future Bugattis will undoubtedly be faster, cleaner and cleverer.

 

But there will only ever be one W16 era.

 

📍 ‘And we may never see its like again.’