Part 7 - A Bugatti in your garage? The restart with Volkswagen

Who would ever have thought of breathing new life into Bugatti with an 18-cylinder engine? Only Ferdinand Piëch. This was after the sad demise of the Campogalliano factory and the purchase of the historic marque by the Volkswagen Group, which believed a brand that had become legend had to continue its path strewn with unexpected and extraordinary things, like a powerful, compact engine featuring three six-cylinder banks.

The W18 6.3 engine, made compact by the use of three banks of six cylinders each forming a double V. Manufactured by Audi with Ferdinand Piech’s support, was mounted on the EB 18/3 Chiron and was destined also for the EB 118 and 218.

The idea was to mount this engine on classic sports models, such as the 18/3 Chiron, and on majestic four-door saloons like the EB 118 and the EB 218. All this seemed ready to take shape between 1998 and 1999. Thanks to a previous contact by Romano Artioli with Italdesign, which had designed the unborn yet very interesting four-door EB 112, Piëch engaged Giorgetto Giugiaro to develop the idea, but sadly, the four-door models never went beyond the prototype stage. In 1999, a lovely, small, two-seater saloon was presented at the Frankfurt Car Show: the 18/3 Chiron.

Designed by Fabrizio Giugiaro, the 18/3 Chiron was unveiled at the 1999 Frankfurt Motor Show and prefigured the shape of the Veyron presented two years later.

Thanks to the passion of Swiss collector Albert Spiess, this very car is still in immaculate condition, with the W18 engine that still performs to perfection, the only existing example of its kind in working order. It was indeed for fear of its excessive complexity that Volkswagen abandoned this technical solution. The equally awe-inspiring alternative is the actual quad-turbocharged W16 of the Veyron.

The final version of the Veyron was unveiled in 2001. The engine became a 7.9-liter quad-turbocharged W16.

Despite being a one-off, the 18/3 Chiron is the forefather of the Bugattis of the new generation. not only did it put the focus back, in a saloon model, on the modern take of the original Bugatti front end and suggested the style of the new models, it also honored the name of the great Monégasque driver Louis Chiron, whose glories were interwoven with those of Bugatti.

Same look, both in running order, but with totally different performances: the splendid, latest Chiron and its twin made with more than a million of Lego bricks. Bugatti’s myth continues.