Manual hypercars and supercars are seeing a resurgence in popularity, and even Bugatti is keen on taking advantage. During the recent Monterey Car Week festival, Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac was asked if there is room in the market for a Bugatti with a manual transmission, and his enthusiastic response to Road & Track tells us he’s already considered the possibility, saying, “Yes, definitely. Definitely. I agree one hundred percent. Imagine [a] V16 with a manual. Real manual.”
That last bit indicates Mr. Rimac would not be interested in recreating the by-wire manual-transmission mimicry seen at Ferrari and Koenigsegg, which makes sense given the heft and opulence that every Bugatti embodies, despite Bugatti and Rimac pushing the boundaries of technology in other areas.
Manual Bugatti Could Be A Solitaire One-Off
Sebastian Cenizo/Ideogram
If Bugatti does build a manual hypercar, it would be rare and expensive no matter what, but this would be a particularly special moment in the brand’s history, and there’s no doubt that Bugatti would milk the moment for all it’s worth. Whether the brand chooses to do that with a special run of a new variant of the Tourbillon (in relatively low numbers, of course) or through Programme Solitaire, Molsheim’s one-off special commissions division, remains to be seen. Programme Solitaire gave us the Brouillard, then the F.K.P. Hommage, and most recently, the exquisite Destrier, with another Bugatti one-off potentially debuting later this year, but never more than two per annum. We hope a manual Bugatti hypercar happens as a special edition rather than a one-off, though, because all the one-offs revealed under Programme Solitaire have been W16-powered creations arriving after their Chiron forefather had ended production, and we don’t want to wait until the Tourbillon is getting long in the tooth before we see and hear Mate’s vision for a manual V16 hypercar. Just listen to how fast the engine revs below.
@topgear VOLUME UP! Bugatti Tourbillon V16 – 8.3-litres, revs like a superbike! Watch the full video on the Top Gear YouTube channel 🚗 Bugatti Tourbillon #Bugatti #Tourbillon #V16 #Hypercar
Autoblog’s Take
A new manual transmission would be difficult to engineer, and producing something sturdy but refined enough for a 1,800-horsepower, multi-million-dollar V16-powered hypercar would certainly compound the difficulty, especially since this Cosworth-developed 8.3-liter motor’s revs rise and fall so fast. But if there’s any group of car customers that can afford to help shoulder the development costs by placing enormous deposits, it’s Bugatti buyers. Is there even space in the Tourbillon to replace the eight-speed dual-clutch automatic with a manual? Perhaps, perhaps not, but with less focus on outright speed, a Tourbillon-based manual hypercar could afford to have its bodywork less closely wrapped around the drivetrain. And with Mate Rimac being a far smarter man than I, he’s probably got some ideas on how to make it work already.
