About a year back Gran Turismo, Sony Entertainment and Polyphony Digital’s stunningly detailed and ambitious racing game, asked some of the world’s best car manufacturers to give free rein to their imagination and come up with their wildest ideas for a virtual Vision Gran Turismo concept super/hypercar. The result was overwhelming. From Mazda to Infiniti to Mercedes-Benz to Aston Martin, we now have a bevy of exotic designs that, sadly, will only live out their lives in pixels and never touch good old asphalt.
The latest manufacturer to join the fray is none other than the big daddy of hypercars, Buggati. The VW-owned French manufacturer has released the first images of the Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo concept, and it is a stonker of a machine.
However, rather than just designing a completely unrealistic pixels-only PlayStation car, the Bugatti design team has gone one step further and created a hypercar that could take on a real-life race track — if, that is, it were ever built in real life. While the car will likely be “outlandish,” according to the press release, the Vision Gran Turismo will give fans a taste of what the next drivable Bugatti, the Chiron, might look like.
This isn’t Bugatti’s first time in a racing game. The Veyron debuted in Forza 3, and has been a fixture in that Xbox series ever since. But it is the first time the French company is designing a digital car just for the millions of gamers — most of whom, it’s probably safe to say, will only ever drive a Bugatti made of bytes.
As you can see in the official renders here, the Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo’s design is heavily based on the Veyron, but could actually preview some design language that could be used on the new Chiron. Covered in the historic French racing blue color, the digital design renderings are based on precise aerodynamic research and real racing technology. The designers wanted to make the Vision GT a true Bugatti, right down to the little details. Like the signature Bugatti horseshoe grille flacked by eight-eyed headlights. And the center fin that is also a nod to design elements from the iconic Type 57 Atlantic.
And you can see it in the flesh, instead of just admiring it in pixels. The Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo concept will be unveiled in life-size form at this month’s Frankfurt Auto Show. Sadly, it is a one-off, but if this is just a tiny smidgen of what we can expect from the upcoming Veyron successor, Bugatti is on solid ground.
By the way, the Bugatti Chiron will cost a whooping one and a half times more than the not-too-cheap Veyron that it is replacing. While the last standard Veyron (there have been too many special edition Veyrons to count) will have set your back balance by a cool million dollars, Car Magazine reports that the Bugatti Chiron will cost an eye-watering $2.5 million.
Not that it is money spent on frivolous pursuits, though. The new Chiron will supposedly feature a quad-turbo 8.0 liter W16 engine, with something like 1,480 bhp of max power, 1500 Nm of torque, and a projected top speed of 244 km/h, hitting 96 km/h in just 2.3 seconds.
Have you booked your tickets for Frankfurt already?
OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE:
The designers have unmistakably transferred the most important characteristics of Bugatti’s design DNA into the styling of the virtual race car. Consequently, the side view of the Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo is characterised by the famous Bugatti line. And the virtual race car has also been furnished with the most recognisable symbol of a Bugatti, the horse shoe on the front grille. It is placed in the centre of the central front air intake as three-dimensional sculpture and supports the structure between the wings and the aerodynamic front splitter. The horse shoe is flanked by the eight-eyed headlights, which were developed especially for the Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo.
Another typical Bugatti design element is the centre fin, which originated on the legendary Type 57 Atlantic from 1936. The designers employ two versions of the fin on the Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo: one on the front and rear wings, where they contribute to the appearance of the vehicle and the other running the length of the roof, where it makes an important contribution to the car’s dynamic stability.
An interesting detail on the roof is the NACA air intake, which, with its contrasting light blue finish, not only has a strikingly beautiful shape but also makes a crucial contribution to the control of the aerodynamic conditions on top of and at the rear of the car without compromising the effectiveness of the impressive rear wing.
The car has a strong trailing edge which provides great longitudinal-dynamic stability, exhausts the hot air from the engine compartment and, no less important, communicates to the pursuer in the video game that a Bugatti is getting away from him.
