Fill the footwell, toddler-style in my own lap, remove and soil my own helmet or attempt to fling open the door and launch a projectile over the sill?
These appear to be my puking options as Andy Wallace gives me the thumbs up and delivers another gut pummelling launch. I nod weakly and turn green. I consider my constitution sturdy, but the Bolide is no respecter of reputations, it’s a feral attack on the eyes, ears and organs, and when you’re in the passenger seat with zero idea when the next punch of acceleration or brick wall of braking is coming, it reduces grown men to gibbering, dribbling wrecks. Being simultaneously flooded with happy hormones, but also wanting to
escape and lie in the foetal position under a bush for a few hours is a new one for me. But then the Bugatti Bolide is a new one for us all.
Plenty of track only hypercars have come before – Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR Pro, Ferrari FXXK, Lamborghini Essenza SCV12 to mention a few of the best – each ferocious in its own way, dismissed as useless toys by most, owned by a handful, driven properly by few... but none is quite as deranged as the Bolide. None takes such a juggernaut of an engine – a 1,578bhp 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16 so totally unsuited to racing with its inherent lag, thirst and heft – and builds an entirely bespoke racecar around it. We’ll get to the astonishing facts and stats that orbit the Bolide, burn brightly then crash into your brain like the meteor it’s named after, but know this – it probably shouldn’t exist. If common sense had prevailed this engineering Everest would have died years ago, but it didn’t, which is what makes it so deeply fascinating. It’s the world’s greatest pub question made real.
We’re at the Nardò proving ground in the heel of Italy’s boot, the first outside of Bugatti’s inner circle to get close to this unicorn... and experience it in full flight. We’ve been wedged into a live development session, but there’s an air of demob happiness about the engineering team as it’s their last official day on the programme. The Bolide’s hardware and software are frozen, proven robust and reliable, which means it’s basically finished minus the polished carbon and purple leather. Customer deliveries will start in the summer and the first two cars are already in production – one a pre-series car that Bugatti will keep, the other destined for the garage of the new gaffer, Mate Rimac.
Normally passenger rides are a hard pass for us, but clearly there are things to learn here – especial
