Bugatti is nothing if not enterprising. With clever and careful manipulation of its one platform and engine it has turned the Chiron into the world’s fastest car (Super Sport 300+), an unlikely trackday weapon (Pur Sport), a homage to a 1990s supercar icon (Centodieci) and the most desirable convertible on the planet (W16 Mistral). But still customers wanted more. And what they wanted, according to Bugatti, is the car you see here, the Chiron Profilée.
The Profilée came about because potential Bugatti owners were asking the luxury automaker for a car with the on-track poise and snappy gearing of the handling-focused Chiron Pur Sport, but classier bodywork that dispensed with the PS’s fixed rear wing. At this level of spend the customer is always right, and Bugatti was ready to oblige, until disaster stuck. The Pur Sport proved incredibly popular, the 60-unit run selling out quickly, leaving no spare capacity for Bugatti to put the Profilée into production without busting over the self-imposed 500-unit maximum it had set for the entire Chiron programme.
Which means the car you’re looking at, and which one lucky soul will get to take home when Bugatti auctions the model for charity through RM Sotheby’s on February 1, is the only Chiron Profilée in existence.
Named, not in fact after a fancy dessert, but in honour of Jean Bugatti’s Type 46 and 50 cars, which were given the same label for their distinctive silhouettes, the Profilée’s calling card is a handsome looping hydraulic rear wing. It takes the place of the fixed spoiler on the Pur Sport and is designed both to provide downforce and draw hot air out of the engine bay.
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The two cars share the same face though, each featuring wide lower air intakes either side of a large horseshoe grille, but you won’t find another Chiron wearing the Profilée’s elegant Argent Atlantique blue paint. The lower section of the body is finished in exposed carbon fiber tinted in Bugatti Blu Royal, a color replicated in sections of the wheels, whose design is again exclusive to this Chiron special. The Profilée is also the first Chiron to get a woven leather finish interior made up of 2,500 m (8,200 ft) of leather strips, which are visible on the door trims and center tunnel.
That interior finish gives the cabin a very different look to the Alcantara-swathed track-ready Pur Sport, but there’s closer kinship under the skin, with both cars featuring chassis tweaks aimed at enhancing the Chiron’s agility. The Profilée’s springs are 10 percent stiffer versus the Chiron Sport’s and the rear axle serves up 50 percent more negative camber to improve cornering grip.
But having driven a Pur Sport back to back with a base Chiron and Chiron Sport I can guarantee that the defining hardware upgrade is the 15 percent shorter rear axle ratio the Pur Sport donates to the new car. The top speed is limited to “only” 236 mph (380 km/h), though that’s still better that the 217 mph (350 km/h) the Pur Sport offers, but what matters is that the in-gear acceleration is on a different level to what you get from a regular Chiron. Seventh gear feels like third in a regal fast car. Standing start energy isn’t bad, either: zero to 62 mph (100 km/h) takes 2.3 seconds and zero to 124 mph (200 km/h) is dispatched in an incredible 5.5 seconds.
And like the Pur Sport, the Profilée archives those numbers using the same 1,479 hp (1,500 PS) quad-turbo W16 engine fitted to the base Chiron, rather than the 1,578 hp (1,600 PS) version found in the Super Sport, and Centodieci. Both of those cars accelerate more slowly because of their taller gears and even the record-breaking 300+ lags behind the Profilée until beyond 150 mph (240 km/h) when its slippery aero body starts to do its thing.
The one thing Bugatti doesn’t disclose is how much the Profileé weighs. The Pur Sport came in at 110 lbs (50 kg) lighter than a stock Chiron, but much of that was due to the fixed wing and trick carbon wheels, neither of which appear on its luxury-lovin’ brother.
As for a price, well that comes down to how much champagne the bidders have been enjoying before the hammer comes down on February 1. But if you consider that the Pur Sport cost $3.6 million and there were 60 of those and only one Profilée, it’s safe to assume it’s going to be a big bill.
