Bugatti’s 1,800-HP Tourbillon Needed Tires No Supercar Could Buy

More Than Just A Successor To The Chiron

The Bugatti Tourbillon doesn’t exactly need help turning heads. It’s the Chiron’s successor, packing a wild 8.3-liter V16 (yes, sixteen cylinders) and a hybrid system for a bonkers 1,800 metric horsepower. Instead of giant screens everywhere, Bugatti went old-school, borrowing cues from classic watchmaking and mechanical wizardry.

But while everyone’s gawking at the V16 and that wild bodywork, Bugatti’s engineers have been sweating over something way less flashy: the tires.

In Bugatti’s latest A New Era development episode, the brand showed off just how much time it spent with Michelin, cooking up a tire made just for the Tourbillon. With the kind of numbers this car is chasing, slapping on an off-the-shelf super tire just wasn’t going to cut it.

Finding The Right Tire For 1,800 PS

To put the final tire contenders through their paces, Bugatti hauled the Tourbillon over to Michelin’s Ladoux test track in France in the summer of 2025. This was just one stop on a wild development tour that’s already seen the car braving Swedish snow and blasting around Italy’s Nardò circuit.

According to Bugatti Chief Test and Development Driver Miroslav Zrnčević, the objective was straightforward: identify the best tire specification from several candidates developed specifically for the car.

After months of digital tinkering and back-and-forth with engineers, Bugatti and Michelin had whittled the options down to three tire sets. At Ladoux, each one got hammered with high-speed corners, handling drills, and enough data logging to make your head spin – all to see which rubber had the grip, stability, and sharpness the Tourbillon demands.

It wasn’t just about the numbers, either. Engineers crunched the data, but the test drivers weighed in on how each tire changed the Tourbillon’s personality and feel from the driver’s seat.

The tricky part? The car and its tires had to be developed at the same time. That meant making big calls before every system was locked in, just to give Michelin enough runway to build and test the final tires before production.

Once they picked the winning tire, Bugatti could finally start dialing in the steering, suspension, dampers, and all the electronic wizardry to match.

The Company Michelin Keeps

The Tourbillon now joins a pretty exclusive club: cars that get their own tailor-made Michelin tires. Over the years, Michelin has teamed up with everyone from Bugatti and Ferrari to Porsche and Koenigsegg, whipping up custom rubber for each car’s wild demands.

For Bugatti, this Michelin partnership goes all the way back to the Veyron, then the Chiron, and now the Tourbillon. Every new Bugatti has needed even crazier tire tech as the power, acceleration, and top speed numbers keep climbing.

That’s why Bugatti treats tires as way more than just throwaway parts. No matter how advanced the Tourbillon’s hybrid system or electronics get, everything still comes down to four little patches of rubber – each barely bigger than a few sheets of paper.

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