Bugatti is saying goodbye to its 8.0-litre W16 engine after 20 years of service. The quad-turbo will make one last appearance in 2024 with the final units of the roadster and track-only machines. Now that Bugatti has merged with Rimac, a new hypercar will emerge, one that features a “totally bonkers” ICE, according to Mate Rimac. 

Bugatti and Rimac only merged 13 months ago after a deal was struck allowing Rimac a stake in Bugatti as long as Porsche got a stake in Rimac. 

Rumours suggested that the successor to the Chiron would be an electric hypercar, but no, it’s a hybrid. The reason for those rumours were because of Rimac’s EV pedigree. 

Mate Rimac, the new CEO of Bugatti Rimac, said that Bugatti’s previous CEO, Stephan Winklemann, came to Rimac to ask them to help develop “an electric CUV similar to what the Ferrari Purosangue turned out to be.” 

However, when the Volkswagen Group asked Rimac (the man) to take over Bugatti, things began to change. 

“I knew exactly what I wanted the next car [after the Chiron] to be and we started developing a combustion engine on our own,” said Rimac. 

The new engine was beginning development two years before Rimac took over the company and he promises it will be something special. 

“It will be a hypercar rearranged as a hybrid,” he said. “It’s completely new, so there’s not one part carried over from any car; nothing carried over from Chiron, nothing carried over from Nevera. Everything is from scratch.”

While that is all very exciting, one has to ask, how will this affect Rimac (the car manufacturer) considering that both companies make hypercars? Quite simply, Rimac said, “It’ll be different technology, but also in the approach.”

Rimac believes that while Bugatti will focus on “heritage and craftsmanship and 100 years of history”, the Rimac branch will “be absolutely insane, bonkers, full-electric.” So Bugatti will have luxury features, combustion engines, and analogue instruments i.e. the “direction of beautiful art” while “Rimac will be about bending physics.”