
Bugatti has released a photo dump showing its nascent Bolide hypercar getting a little coy with some of its clothes off. Currently #6 on our list of the world’s most powerful cars, the 1,825-hp Bolide prototype is an epically raw rejection of luxury.
It brings us no small measure of glee to see Bugatti leaving the luxury trowel in the bucket and going so rudely performance-focused on the Bolide. This series of tastefully dusty pit garage shots make the Bolide look a hair’s breadth away from being a race car.
The steering wheel cover, for example, looks like it’s been sewn together out of a couple of cut-up beer coolers. The interior trim is an afterthought. The linkages look spindly and utilitarian. And the carbon! Carbon fiber has become so fetishistically glamorized in the last decade or two that it’s almost shocking to see it here looking rough, raw, hand-laid and unvarnished instead of glossed within an inch of its life and presented as bling.
I love it. But being realistic, this is a hastily-assembled prototype, so its rough-hewn finish will probably be filed back to a typically showy gleam by the time the production cars are finished. Such is the way of vastly expensive things.