Bugatti Chiron Sport 2019 Review

The speedo needle sweeps past 300km/h and continues its relentless arc around the dial. There’s plenty more to come, but at 313km/h I back off the gas.

This is neither the time, nor the place, for further heroics… especially as just half an hour earlier I’d signed a form that stated I would end up buying the Bugatti Chiron Sport (or what was left of it) if things went pear-shaped. That would be a debt even five lifetimes wouldn’t be enough to pay off.

In any case, I’ve done enough to re-establish what I already knew from having driven the standard Chiron a couple of years ago at its international launch in Portugal – that the Bugatti sits in a different stratosphere to even the most extreme offerings from Ferrari, Lamborghini et al.

It’s once you get past 200km/h, and even more so once you get past the triple-ton, that the 1103kW/1600Nm nuclear-force wallop of 8.0 litres worth of quad-turbocharged 16-cylinder engine makes its brutality felt.

Where the rate of acceleration begins to tail off in ‘regular’ hypercars by this stage, the Bugatti is only just getting started.

Given how unhinged – yet remarkably civilised – the standard Chiron is, you’d hardly think there was the need for a ‘Sport’ version. The donor car is already too fast for the grey matter to comprehend, so any more would be just plain lunacy.

However, the new derivative is all about subtle dynamic enhancements and increased tactility as the powertrain remains exactly as it is in the ‘base model’. But with a claimed 0-100km/h sprint of just 2.5sec and 0-200km/h in an unholy 6.5sec, there’s not too much to complain about, is there?

Bugatti claims the Sport is 5sec a lap quicker than the regular Chiron around the Nardo handling circuit, and the key lies in a 10 per cent firmer suspension set-up and revised damping strategy, although this is only unleashed in the car’s ‘Handling’ mode.

The Chiron Sport also launches out of corners with more vigour (not that the standard car was lacking in this department), thanks to a rear differential that’s been optimised with a new dynamic torque vectoring function.

In addition, steering response has been sharpened up to make the Chiron Sport quicker to change direction.

Even though the Chiron tips the scales at a beefy 1996kg, it’s already chockful of lightweight components. This is about as sprightly as a leather-lined road car with all the mod-cons can get when equipped with a 16-cylinder engine with four turbos strapped on, not to mention the ultra-robust brakes, cooling system and driveline components that need to stand up to such a powertrain.

Given these facts, there wasn’t a whole lot of scope to reduce the Chiron’s girth, but the Sport does manage to come in 18kg lighter, thanks to a new set of thin-spoked rims, carbon-fibre windscreen wipers (a production-car first) and a lightened window over the engine compartment.

It takes a keen eye to differentiate the Chiron Sport from its standard sibling, but the most obvious giveaways are the bespoke wheels and the menacing four-exhaust cluster mounted centrally (in lieu of the twin outlets of the latter).

Inside, you’ll find black adonised finishes for the switchgear and stitched ‘Chiron Sport’ motifs on the upholstery.

Driving the Chiron Sport is pure sensory overload, and the human brain can barely take in the stupefying rate at which the car annihilates distance.

It would take a back-to-back drive with the Chiron to take in the full magnitude of the enhancements made to the Sport’s steering and suspension, but what comes through loud and clear is how supremely cohesive and predictable – even in the hands of relatively inexperienced drivers – the car is.

Providing a safe foundation to unleash mind-blowing performance is something even the Veyron did back in the day, but the previous-gen apex hypercar wasn’t the most involving thing to steer.

It felt as though there were several layers of electronic gubbins stage-managing every facet of the vehicle’s operation as you went about flinging it at the horizon.

Yes, it was supremely well tied down and safe almost to the point of being fool-proof, but the only lasting impression it left me with after a four-hour thrash was how damn fast the 16-cylinder Bug could eat up straight lines.

This lack of connection is something the boffins addressed in the Chiron, which feels far more involving to steer than its predecessor, not to mention far more nimble and chuckable, even though there’s two tonnes worth of it.

That said, it still isn’t a Lamborghini Huracan Performante or Ferrari 488 Pista in terms of neck-hair-raising levels of tactility and unfiltered responses, and nor is it meant to be. The Chiron is more continent destroyer than track demon.

The Bugatti Chiron Sport we’re focusing on here leans more towards the track side of the equation with its aforementioned chassis tweaks, but this isn’t at the expense of the supple suspension compliance of the standard car.

There’s still a cossetting feel to it that makes it a supremely focused grand tourer rather than a bone-jarring lap-record chaser.

Our brief drive route contains only a handful of fast sweepers to attack but – even with my relative lack of familiarity, given that I’ve just jumped into the car – the Sport instils enough confidence to carry more corner speed than you’d seemingly be able to in anything barring the most hard-core offerings from Lamborghini, Ferrari, McLaren, Porsche et al.

Apart from the stiffened suspension, there’s also a massive footprint and a fair bit of aero trickery working to your advantage, and this is largely why the car feels as planted as it does.

Again, it’s hard to precisely quantify the dynamic gains over the regular Chiron, but that’s almost like splitting hairs when you’re going this fast. Unless you’re chasing lap times on a racetrack, it’s pretty much irrelevant.

Even the $400K premium the Sport commands over the stocker is hardly likely to cause prospective customers to bat an eyelid (the average Bugatti owner has 84 cars, three jets and one yacht).

The standard Chiron already has an otherworldly soundtrack with its 16 cylinders, 64 valves, quartet of turbos and huge exhaust outlets emitting a cacophony of mechanical chattering, wastegate whooshes and angry bellows.

All these noises are dialled up appreciably in the Sport, which makes do with less in the sound-deadening department. This adds to the sensory bludgeoning – in a good way.

A handful of other hypercar manufacturers (Koenigsegg, Zenvo, Rimac, etc) may well churn out offerings with similar horsepower claims, but the Bugatti’s supreme all-round capabilities, hewn-from-titanium feel and exquisite engineering in even the tiniest components sets it apart from the rest.

It’s only after driving it and scrutinising the hundreds of immaculately sculpted details that you begin to understand why it costs as much as it does.

Piloting the Bugatti Chiron Sport isn’t an experience, it’s an event. Perhaps I might one day get to tell my grandkids (who will doubtless be commuting in autonomous pods or drones) about that one time their grandpappy got behind the wheel of the grand overlord of fossil-fuel-burning cars.

How much does the 2019 Bugatti Chiron Sport cost?
Price: From $A4.25 million (ex-factory)
Engine: 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16
Outputs: 1103kW/1600Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch automatic
0-100km/h: 2.5sec
0-200km/h: 6.5sec
0-300km/h: 13.6sec
Top speed: 420km/h (electronically governed)
Fuel consumption: 22.5L/100km
CO2: 516g/km
Safety rating: N/A