Bugatti Tourbillon Revealed: Redefining Aerodynamics in a New Hyper Sports Car Era
In June 2024, Bugatti unveiled the Tourbillon to the world at its historic home in Molsheim. Every facet of this remarkable automobile demonstrates Bugatti’s ambition to extend the boundaries of possibility—most strikingly through its state-of-the-art aerodynamic design. In the latest instalment of A New Era, Bugatti’s top engineers and aerodynamic specialists reveal the art of crafting a hyper sports car that genuinely masters the forces of air.
Creating one of the world’s most aerodynamically advanced road cars began with a single guiding principle: surpassing the achievements of everything that came before. “The Tourbillon’s predecessor, the Chiron, already delivered low drag. But with the Tourbillon, we must exceed that,” explains Paul Burnham, Bugatti’s Chief Vehicle Engineer for the Tourbillon.
Taking aerodynamic performance beyond the record-breaking Chiron started with a small yet crucial phase in the development process. After Bugatti’s design and engineering teams laid the foundations for their next hypersports car, they conducted months of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations to form an initial picture of potential performance. Fifteen months before the Tourbillon’s global debut, a team of Bugatti’s most accomplished engineers and aerodynamicists gathered at a state-of-the-art wind tunnel facility in Italy. At the centre of their focus was an exquisitely built half-scale model of the Tourbillon.
This model, meticulously composed of 250 individually 3D-printed components and equipped with over 100 pressure taps, reflected the exact form that would evolve into the Tourbillon. Strategically placing these measurement points around the model’s exterior was vital in the Tourbillon’s aerodynamic development. By correlating each point of mass-flow measurement, static pressure, and air velocity, the aerodynamic team validated their simulated predictions with precision.
Throughout the Tourbillon, Bugatti’s engineers and aerodynamicists harmonised data-driven insights with world-class expertise. They refined every aspect of the vehicle’s design—from reducing the complex frontal area to introducing a sophisticated rear diffuser and diminishing the cockpit’s glasshouse profile. These enhancements mark a significant advancement from Chiron’s design.
From start to finish, the engineers aimed to optimise drag coefficients and manage airflow across the Tourbillon’s entire body. Countless hours of meticulous work and rigorous testing led to a dynamic performance that set a new benchmark. SItis through the refinement of these efforts, the Tourbillon can achieve its top speed without deploying its rear wing while maintaining exceptional stability.
As the team painstakingly matched simulation results to real-world tests and refined each part, the Tourbillon evolved from a scale model into a full-size prototype—necessitating ever-larger wind-tunnel facilities. After years of intensive development, the first experimental prototypes confirmed the accuracy of the aerodynamic team’s carefully curated simulations, paving the way for more advanced prototypes and culminating in the final embodiment of Bugatti’s new era.
