Brief Notes On The Meaning Of The Bugatti Tourbillon

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What’s so great about the new Bugatti? In a word, everything — but if you look at what people are choosing to share and comment on across social media, the story of the “Tourbillon” is very different from that of its predecessors. The Veyron was designed around a pair of numbers: 1,001 horsepower and 250mph. Its successor, the Chiron, turned out 1,500 horsepower and reportedly hit 304mph in testing, though it was limited in practice to 261. Now we have the Tourbillon, with 1,800hp and an easily achieved 276mph top whack… but those numbers are taking a distant third billing to the two things you don’t get, namely: a touchscreen display and a quartet of turbochargers.

The Tourbillon is named after the wristwatch “complication” that houses part of the timekeeping mechanism in a rotating cage. Developed 220-plus years ago, the tourbillon was meant to enhance accuracy. In 2024, any G-Shock or Bulova Precisionist is more accurate than the best mechanical movement, so the current purpose of having a tourbillon on your wrist is to show that you can afford the extra expense of it; most name-brand tourbillon watches cost $50k or more.

The Bugatti’s astounding instrument cluster, never obscured by the steering wheel because the hub is fixed and the wheel spokes rotate behind the gauges, is described thus:

The centerpiece of this takes the horologie philosophy to its most literal conclusion; an instrument cluster designed and built with the expertise of Swiss watchmakers. Made up of more than 600 parts and constructed from titanium as well as gemstones such as sapphire and ruby, the skeletonized cluster is built to the largest tolerance of 50 microns, with the smallest at 5 microns, and weighs just 700g.

The aesthetic of it is obviously inspired by the “skeleton” watches that have been in and out of vogue lately. You can see all the gears turning. The most-shared video of the new Bugatti is simply the speedometer and tach operating through a full acceleration run.

The message here is simple: screens are for proles. It’s been coming for a while, actually; the children of the Silicon Valley elite attend the Waldorf school, where screens are banned through 8th grade and used sparingly in high school. Meanwhile, cheap Chinese and Korean Seagulls and IONIQs feature full-width LCDs and the 7-Series BMW, long the weak sister of German luxury sedans, boasts a Costco television in the back seat.

Some vehicular functions of The Current Year require a screen, however, so Bugatti provides one with all the discretion of a concierge at the Peninsula securing your prostitute for the evening:

But hidden from view until desired is a high-definition digital screen, which displays vehicle data and offers seamless mobile connection. An intricately engineered mechanism deploys the touchscreen from the top of the center console; portrait mode for the reversing camera in just two seconds and full landscape mode in five seconds.

The rest of the time, you won’t be troubled by anything as low-class as a visible touchscreen. Which means you’ll have time to enjoy what is likely the most expensive bespoke street-car powertrain of all time. The Veyron used a W16 that relied on VW’s modular VR design and was basically two Passat W8s together. For the Tourbillon, all association with everyday vehicles has been firmly banished. The Cosworth-developed V-16 revs to 9,000rpm without the assistance of forced induction. Electric motors bring the total system power up to 1,800 horsepower while providing a 37-mile all-electric range. Again, full electric power is for proles; the aristocracy gets 9,000 rpm from a naturally-aspirated internal-combustion engine.

It’s lighter than the Chiron thanks to a full carbon monocell-style frame and various little innovations like vibrating the interior panels instead of mounting traditional audio speakers. 250 examples will be built at 3.8 million Euros each. I can’t see how they’re making money at that price and volume — presumably the platform will be used for several additional vehicles, because the total revenue of the Tourbillon won’t exceed a billion dollars. (One wonders how much of the V-16 engineering was shared with Gordon Murray’s V-12, also developed at Cosworth.)

Self-consciously intended to be “displayed on the concours lawns of this and the next centuries”, the Tourbillon is fascinating both as a mechanical object and a harbinger of luxury vehicles to come. For five decades now, “upscale” has been defined the way William Towns did with the original 1974 Aston Lagonda: early access to the most aggressive technology and future-focused styling. Whether it was the infamous Motorola “Timeport” phone fitted to the S-Class Mercedes or General Motors’ decision to differentiate the Escalade from the Yukon Denali via LCD-screen width, tech has been an indicator of wealth and success. Those days are now officially over. A full suite of Chinese-made tech equipment is the new prole normal. In the future, cars will be judged on how successfully they distance themselves from that.

Last but not least, the Tourbillon amounts to a significant mask-slippage on the part of the elites or lizard people or Illuminati or whatever you want to call them. They never intended to ban the internal combustion engine; instead, they envisioned a future where you commuted to an open-plan office via a battery-powered penalty box while they blasted past with the frenetic mechanical symphony of a 9,000-rpm V-16. You’ll be poking at an endless series of effluvium-coated touchscreens on your wrist, at the restaurant, at work. They’ll consult a mechanical Patek for the approximate time then have a real human being take their order for lunch. The value and materials content of everything you buy and own will be slowly leached over time even as their homes and furniture and clothing become increasingly handmade.

The money that went into the creation of the Tourbillon could just as easily have funded a Volkswagen Miata or new-generation Porsche 914, something that you could afford on a middle-class salary and enjoy the hell out of on a daily basis. Such a vehicle might have been more profitable than the new Bugatti. The fact that it was never even contemplated, and that the existence of a next-generation Bugatti was never really in doubt, is the biggest lesson of all.