Bugatti unveils super-exclusive Centodieci

FRENCH hypercar manufacturer Bugatti has paid homage to its EB110 coupe from the 1990s with the reveal of the super-exclusive Centodieci, which will be produced in a limited run of just 10 units.

 

Revealed at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the Centodieci’s exclusivity is matched by its pricetag, with Bugatti asking €8 million ($A13.087m) for the right to own one.

 

The huge asking price has not been a deterrent, however, as all 10 units have already been spoken for.

 

As well as drawing inspiration from the EB110, the Centodieci (Italian for 110) has also been made to celebrate the company’s 110th anniversary.

 

The Centodieci’s styling reflects a modern interpretation of the EB110, with Bugatti head designer Achim Anscheidt saying there were a number of difficulties in designing such a vehicle.

 

“We faced a number of technical challenges in terms of the development and design of the Centodieci,” he said.

 

“Transporting this classic look into the new millennium without copying it was technically complex, to say the least.

 

“We had to create a new way of combining the complex aerothermal requirements of the underlying Chiron technology with a completely different aesthetic appearance.”

 

Like the EB110, the Centodieci features a radiator grille with a shrunken horseshoe design in the centre, flanked by horizontally louvred side intakes that give the vehicle a low, forward-slanting look.

 

While the EB110 features squared-off headlights, the Centodieci features thin, narrow headlights with integrated LED daytime running lights that sit beside an aerodynamic line that runs through to the engine’s air intakes on the car’s flanks.

 

The air inserts have been divided into five smaller circular inlets on each side of the vehicle like in the EB110 SS, providing a different interpretation to the Chiron’s wave-like side profile.

 

Bugatti has also blacked out the A-pillar to help give the Centodieci a low-slung look, complemented by the black-and-white front splitter and side skirts, and large alloy wheels.

 

At the rear, the EB110’s oval-shaped tail-lights have been replaced by an LED strip motif that evokes the design of the original, with rounded edges and LED strips across the centre, mirroring the EB110’s rear air outlets.

 

The lights sit in front of a large air cooling grate, which took months of development to ensure adequate engine cooling.

 

A massive fixed-wing spoiler, huge diffuser and vertically stacked quad-exit tailpipes finish off the Centodieci’s rear end, and help to give the hypercar a menacing on-road stance.

 

The Centodieci is powered by the same 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16 engine as the Chiron, with power lifted slightly from 1103kW to a huge 1176kW at 7000rpm. Peak torque has not been disclosed, but the 1600Nm figure of the Chiron is likely.

 

With 20kg of unladen weight saved compared to the Chiron, the Centodieci sprints from standstill to 100km/h in just 2.4 seconds, to 200km/h in 6.1s and on to an electronically limited top speed to 380km/h.

 

The Centodieci is not the first Chiron-based special-edition model, with the track-focused Divo revealed in August last year, and the one-off La Voiture Noire that managed to fetch a hefty pricetag of €16.7m ($A27.32m).