WELCOME HOME

Some emails are better than others. Case in point: When Bugatti PR asks if you’d like to compare and contrast the Chiron Sport against the new Chiron Pur Sport (pronounced “pure sport”), well, that’s a pretty good email. Yes, I spent a day driving two cars that between them have 3,000 horsepower, 32 cylinders, eight turbochargers, 128 valves, and 20 radiators. Together, they cost north of $7.7 million. That’s $3,757,150 for the blue exposed-carbon-fiber Chiron Sport and $3,959,000 for the Jet Grey Pur Sport. I’ll get to the differences between them, but first a little story about the first time I drove a Bugatti.

In 2010, Bugatti unveiled the Veyron Super Sport at the annual Pebble Beach hootenanny. The ultimate Veyron was fresh off its (then) record-setting top-speed assault, where Pierre-Henri Raphanel piloted the 1,200-hp mega-thing to a Guinness-certified top speed of 268 mph. I was a Bentley guest at Pebble, and at dinner I sat across from Franz-Josef Paefgen, who at the time was CEO of both Bentley and Bugatti. I peppered him with questions about Veyron development; he was brought in to “fix” the car halfway through its evolution from fever dream of Volkswagen Group übermensch Ferdinand Piëch to its eventual 1,001-PS (987 SAE hp) reality.

There were nine issues, Paefgen explained, that held up Veyron production. Around the meal’s third course, our conversation