Ettore Bugatti, the father of Bugatti supercars, was known for his eccentricities, one of which was to continually try and upgrade the best of his best creations. After Volkswagen rekindled the fire in Bugatti with the launch of the Veyron, the engineers have made sure Ettore’s legacy lives on even after building something as great as the Chiron.
Bugatti engineers have developed brand new titanium brakes to drop anchor on the 1500bhp tornado. Made out of an alloy of titanium, aluminium and vanadium, the 41cm long, 21cm wide and 14cm thick calliper has been 3D printed.
3D printing technology has been around for long, but it dealt only with materials that are easy to form and just for those who aren’t scientists, anything that involves titanium is nothing even remotely close. Being one of the toughest materials in the business, working with titanium requires dealing with science at a level where even most of our school toppers would cry ‘out of syllabus’.
For us lesser mortals, the new titanium callipers weigh about 2.9kg apiece as against the 5kg forged callipers that are serving on the Chiron right now. While this reduces more than 4kg of weight, it also results in lesser unsprung mass. For a two-tonner car it wouldn’t have mattered, but when you are speaking about 1500bhp of power and a 0-100kmph dash in just over two seconds, every pound matters.
So, these brakes will shave off probably half a second from its 42 second timing of 0-400kmph-0 record or drop a couple of seconds off its Nurburgring timings. And these are exactly the things for which you buy a Bugatti.
