Bugatti Tourbillon Hits the Track To Unleash Its V-16 Fury

Although Mate Rimac made a name for himself with electric hypercars, he’s a true petrolhead who loves combustion engines as much as we do. The old guard at the Volkswagen Group wanted the Chiron replacement to be fully electric, but he insisted on having an ICE setup at the heart of the Tourbillion. His efforts to keep the gas engine alive paid off. A new video published by the Bugatti Rimac CEO allows us to hear the glorious 8.3-liter engine.

Footage shot in Italy at the Nardo track shows a camouflaged prototype of the Tourbillion doing a few revs before taking off. Predictably, the new machine from Molsheim delivers rapid acceleration, but the sweet noise impresses the most. Mate Rimac confirms the production car will sound exactly like this, and he hopes Bugatti won’t have to install a soft limiter. The naturally aspirated V-16 screams all the way up to 9,000 rpm, making it one of the highest-revving production cars ever produced.

The Bugatti Tourbillion laughs in the face of downsizing by retaining all sixteen cylinders of its modern predecessors. They’re arranged differently now, from the VW Group’s W-16 layout used for the Veyron and Chiron to a V-16 setup engineered by Cosworth. Few cars have had such an engine, and emissions regulations were practically non-existent in the 1930s when the Marmon Sixteen and the Cadillac V-16 came out. It was also much easier to comply with legislation in the 1990s when the Cizeta-Moroder V16T was launched.

Bugatti could fit a V-16 inside its new crown jewel and still pass regulations by giving the Tourbillion a hybrid powertrain with three electric motors. Ferrari’s F80 is also electrified, but the LaFerrari’s V-12 has been replaced by a much smaller V-6, which enthusiasts have already criticized for its subdued note. The McLaren W1 still has a V-8 like the old P1, and it sounds pretty good, at least in official videos.

There are still a handful of V-12 cars, but models such as the Ferrari 12Cilindri, Aston Martin Vanquish, and Lamborghini Revuelto are far cheaper than the Tourbillion. AMG continues to supply Pagani with a V-12 for its Utopia, while Cosworth builds twelve-cylinder engines for the Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA) T.33 and T.50.

These large-displacement engines are increasingly rarer, and Bugatti wants the supersized ICE to go out with a bang by putting a V-16 in a production car. Only 250 units will be made, and deliveries will start in 2026.