Bugatti Bolide is a track only weapon capable of hitting 500km/h

Bugatti has shown off its wild new supercar, which has some crazy features that will most likely make it illegal to drive on the road.

Bugatti Bolide supercar.

Bugatti says a new supercar capable of reaching 500km/h is “like riding a cannonball”, such is the ferocity of its performance. It represents the future of petrol-powered supercars as more regions move to block the sales of new combustion-driven vehicles in the near future. With quad-turbocharged 16-cylinder beasts set to be banned from the roads in cities such as London, Paris and Los Angeles, Bugatti has to go electric or confine its fastest cars to closed circuits.

It will be illegal to drive the Bugatti Bolide supercar on the road.

Expect the French brand to do both.

Built to rival track-only toys such as the LaFerrari FXXK and McLaren P1 GTR, the new Bugatti Bolide trades the luxurious approach of cars like the Bugatti Veyron and Chiron for an uncompromising focus on performance.

Weighing in at 1240 kilograms – about 750 kilos less than the road-going Chiron – the new Bugatti Bolide is made from exotic materials such as carbon fibre and titanium. 3D Printing technology has allowed the supercar marque to reduce the car’s weight to approximately that of a Volkswagen Golf by 3D-printing titanium alloy parts just half a millimetre thick.

#D printing has allowed Bugatti to cut the Bolide’s weight dramatically.

Freed from the shackles of road-going noise and pollution requirements, the Bolide produces a shocking 1361kW of power and 1850Nm of torque.

You could remove 1000 kilowatts and Newton metres from the beast and still have a car with more power than the Ford’s V8-equipped Mustang GT, and more torque than Porsche’s 911 Turbo. It has almost triple the pulling power of Nissan’s GT-R and more than nine times the power of a Toyota HiLux.

The Bolide is nine times more powerful than a Toyota HiLux.

Bugatti says that’s enough to reach a top speed “well above 500 km/h”. Computer simulations suggest it needs only 3:07.1 minutes to lap Le Mans, or 5:23.1 minutes to get around the Nordschleife. That would make it faster than any race car short of the latest Formula 1 machines.

Bugatti hasn’t released a price for the Bolide, though it’s safe to say that it will be offered to existing customers first, the sort of folks who don’t need to choose between a buying new supercar, helicopter or coastal retreat this Christmas. They can grab all three.

Majority-owned by the Volkswagen Group which also contains Lamborghini and Porsche, Bugatti is now part-held by electric supercar specialists Rimac. That deal should bear fruit in the form of an electric hypercar wearing the Bugatti badge in the near future – well before emissions laws ban the sale of petrol machines altogether.

Originally published as Bugatti Bolide is a track only weapon capable of hitting 500km/h