110 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK | OCTOBER 2019
manual transmission is surprisingly friendly. Certainly more so than the
power delivery. Despite the sequential little-and-large IHI quad-turbo
set-up, there’s pronounced lag, boost coming in with a bang at 5000rpm,
right about the time we need to make a sharp left, jinking the nose through
a tiny sliver of concrete between the corner of the factory and a hedge.
Past the canteen entrance on the factory’s north side we make another
hard left and the boost builds again as we pass the doors of the old R&D
department. Contemporary tests revealed the EB110 SS could hit 62mph in
a shocking 3.2 seconds, in part thanks to the four-wheel-drive traction.
‘Artioli wanted to create a car that wasn’t only fast, but also very safe,’
recalls Bicocchi. ‘That’s why he pushed for the four-wheel drive. No one
was really doing that at the time, and that fascinated me. I had been at
Lamborghini since 1975, I was ready for a change and the EB110 sounded
like an exciting project.’
The first prototypes were built around aluminium honeycomb chassis,
but that switched to carbonfibre for production. The engine was entirely
new, a quad-turbo, 3.5-litre, 60v V12 fitted with spur gears, rather than
chains or belts, to drive its four cams. The original EB110 GT made 552bhp,
but by 1992 it had been joined by the faster, more focused 602bhp EB110
Super Sport. When the SS recorded a 218mph top speed at Nardo it became
the fastest production car in the world.
‘Artioli was definitely involved with the design and engineering process,’
remembers Bicocchi. ‘He had a good technical mind. I was surprised
because I had expected him to be just a manager, a businessman.’
Maybe Artioli should have concentrated less on the engineering and
more on being that businessman. To be fair, the fairytale’s collapse wasn’t
entirely his fault. A global financial crisis, problems getting the car certified
for sale in the US and the launch of McLaren’s vastly more expensive, but
technically superior and even faster F1, didn’t help. But buying Lotus really
signed Bugatti’s death warrant. It did give us the Elise – named after his
granddaughter – but the financial strain was too much and Bugatti was
forced to close its doors in ’95.
They’re open today though. In Campogalliano’s circular, partly sub-
terranean showroom, Winkelmann and Anscheidt are ready to whip the
covers off the first new Bugatti to grace this floor in a quarter-century: the
Centodieci. The name is simply One Hundred and Ten in Italian. When
the EB110 was new the numbers referenced the anniversary of founder
Ettore’s birth. Now they celebrate the anniversary of Bugatti as a car maker.
And the €10m price translates to £9.26m. That’s before tax, obviously. The
Chiron, preposterously expensive by any normal rationale, looks a compar-
ative bargain at around £2.2m.
For the GDP of Niue in the South Pacific you get a car based on the
Chiron, but bearing little resemblance. That car’s trademark art-deco
curves, giant horseshoe badge, and sweep of flared rear bodywork engulf-
ing the front like a giant Pac-Man, are all gone, or at least neutered.
Instead you get straight lines, angles, and fascinating layers of slash-cut
carbon bodywork, some of which only reveal themselves when you look
long and close enough to get past a feeling that this much more generic-
looking supercar is just a shameless cash-in.
Winkelmann, who wisely decided against putting Lamborghini’s 2005
retro Miura into production, had his doubts, too.
‘For me, a car company should always be looking forward,’ says the boss.
‘But when I saw the design I realised we could still do that.’
Apart from the most obvious EB110 motif – the five elliptical intakes
behind the door glass – most stylistic nods to the old car are discreet: the
smaller horseshoe grille and horizontal vents; the NACA ducts relocated to
the trailing edge of the roof panel; the EB’s rear lamps, twisted through 90º
and turned into exhaust tailpipes nestled in the huge diffuser.
There’s no interior in this styling mock-up, but Anscheidt claims it will
closely echo the Chiron’s in shape, if not in material choice and colour. ⊲
Inside Bugatti’s forgotten chapter
Centodieci costs
about £7m more
than its Chiron
donor car.
Expensive stuff,
exclusivity
