Bugatti May Be Working On A Divo Successor

Volkswagen's French-born Bugatti division is best known for its accolades in straight-line speed, the most recent being a 300-plus-mph run in a special version of the Bugatti Chiron. But optimizing a car for both linear speed and road course finesse is essentially impossible, as maximizing lateral acceleration requires speed-robbing aerodynamic downforce, and powering out of a corner calls for shorter gearing than what a top-speed-focused car might have.

So, having cracked the 300 mph barrier in a production car, Volkswagen's super-high-performance marque for the uber-rich might now be turning its attention toward its next track-focused vehicle. Although, in a recent interview with Autocar, CEO Stephan Winkelmann was very tight-lipped about the details.

"Being the spearhead of performance, it's difficult to cover all types of performance with one car," Winkelmann told Autocar. "If you want to create the best-performing car yet, you have to decide whether to go for longitudinal acceleration and top speed - this is what we've done with the [Chiron Super Sport] 300+ - or you focus on downforce, handling and weight reduction and that's lateral acceleration."

Achieving both paradigms in a single car isn't possible "at this level of performance," he said. "So we did one and now we are working on something different - you guess what!"

This "something different" could end up being similar in spirit to the Bugatti Divo - a limited-run track-focused model mechanically similar to the Chiron, but whose curb weight, suspension, and aerodynamics have been honed for improved cornering abilities.