The W16 engine has been at the heart of every Bugatti since the Veyron launched in 2005. The road cars that end the W16 era have always meant something special: Unique, Elegant, and powerful the best in class.
Meet the W16 Mistral- The ultimate sports car.
CEO Matti Rimac said: “For the legendary Bugatti W16 engine to see its final chapter on the road, we knew we had to build a sports car. More than 40 percent of Bugatti cars are convertibles, establishing a long list of distinctive performance attributes that are still respected around the world to this day.”
The W16 Mistral opens a new chapter in the history of Bugatti sports cars, inspired by more than a century of open legends. In the Chiron era, there was no sports car yet. Hence, the introduction of the W16 Mistral continues this tradition, given the strong demand from our customers to experience the powerful performance of our iconic engine in a whole new way.
Bugatti will only be building 99 units of the W16 Mistral, priced at around $5 million apiece to start, all of which are selling out fast.
Deliveries will commence in 2024 alongside the track-only Bolide, which also uses the W16. By production ends, Bugatti will have built at least 1,140 cars with the W16, not including prototypes and development cars.
Bugatti design director Achim Anscheidt said, “We know the W16 Mistral will always be important in Bugatti history, and this is the last time it is perhaps the best powertrain ever used in a production car underway.” As a design team, we felt great. He created a design instantly conveying that defining moment, inspired by some of the best sports cars in Bugatti’s history.
The Iconic Design
The curved windshield, which appears to wrap around the A-pillars, blends seamlessly with the side windows to create a ‘mask,’ a nod to the level of competition performance offered by the W16 Mistral. It is an engineering marvel curved enough to make a rounded visor design without distorting the driver’s view.
The top line of the windshield and side windows intentionally flow around the side air intakes. This line then flows through the side windows and back into the horseshoe front grille, creating a new 3D character for the famous Bugatti C line introduced in the Chiron.
The Mistral’s horseshoe grille is even bigger and broader than La Voiture Noire’s.
Enough to feed air to the engine radiator, leaving the massive intakes on each side to direct air to the intercoolers alone. The Mistral’s four-slat headlights represent the car’s four turbos and four-wheel drive, and the lights’ 3D surface points perspective through to the wheel arches.
The Mistral’s quad-thin bars are placed at more of an angle and almost meet in the center. The horizontal planes have excellent U-shaped internals, and the center bar features a lit-up, three-dimensional Bugatti script.
The space between the light bars has ducts that vent air through to the side oil coolers and radiators, thus creating a pressure drop between the car’s side intakes and the rear outlets.
To keep the body sides slim and to provide optimal airflow for the W16, the oil cooler intakes on the sides were separated from the engine intakes on the roof, just behind the occupants.
