Driven! If Hypercars Were Video Game Characters, the Bugatti Mistral Is the Final Boss
Just your average $6,000,000, 282-mph topless French car.
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As you exit the roundabout a few hundred feet from the entrance to Bugatti’s factory and headquarters in Molsheim, France, you will spot a gaggle of people standing around. Most are quite young, all are male, and each is holding some sort of camera. They ignored me when I first arrived because I was driving a rental Audi Q3. However, I quickly became the center of their world as we drove out in a gorgeous, roofless, exposed-blue carbon fiber Bugatti Mistral.
Later, when our crew returned to shoot some video of the Mistral on the beautiful property, I noticed a few car spotters had figured out what we were up to and ran to catch images through a wrought iron fence. Now I know how Willy Wonka felt.
Andy Wallace, the famed Le Mans winner and the (asterisked) production car top-speed record-holder (304.773 mph in a Bugatti Chiron 300+), assured us this is a daily occurrence, rain or shine. Why do they wait? While Lamborghini or Ferrari build thousands and thousands of cars a year, Bugatti produces just 85. Even at Molsheim, catching a moving Bugatti is rare. The Mistral, which we were given the almost unheard-of opportunity to drive, has a production run of just 99 cars.
Every road-legal Bugatti (the track-only Bolide cannot be driven on public roads) undergoes around 250 shakedown miles before customer delivery. However, the cars are meticulously wrapped in thick plastic to guard against the elements. Seeing an unwrapped Bugatti like the 24,000-plus-mile engineering mule I drove is a very rare event.
Like every Bugatti built since 2005, the Mistral employs a version of the 8.0-liter quad-turbo W-16 powerplant first seenin the Veyron 16.4. Twenty years ago, in the OG Veyron 16.4, this powerplant produced a minimum of 989 hp (almost every Bugatti engine produces more power than advertised). The Mistral uses the same engine as the Chiron Super Sport and 300+, so that’s at least 1,578 hp and 1,180 lb-ft of torque. Andy commented that the unusual, relatively cool late July temperature meant that our car would be producing big power. A quick full throttle blast and the onboard computer told us we had 1,610 PS—1,588 hp—underfoot. That will do.
“The Noise”
“Fourth gear is the best way to make it happen,” Andy tells me. We had just heard, “the noise,” a Mistral signature sound you only get in the topless roadster. I’d coaxed it forth by accident by smoothly accelerating in third gear down an on ramp. We’re now doddering along with traffic on a quiet stretch of freeway a few miles from Molsheim. I selected fourth gear by clicking the left paddle a few times. “Now, floor it.” The Mistral’s W-16 packs two different-size turbochargers. The two little ones operate below 4,000 rpm, the two big’uns above.
I should also note that unlike the Chiron, the Mistral has two massive cold air intakes just inches from its occupants’ heads. If you’re driving, it’s just behind your right ear. By purposely inducing a bit of lag, there’s a way to trick the motor into suddenly snapping awake the two larger turbos. You hear a sharp, metallic click that’s quickly followed by what sounds like the roar of a hurricane. It only lasts a beat or two, but it’s one of the greatest noises in the automotive kingdom. Suddenly, the Mistral is consuming 1,000 liters of air per second while hurtling forward. All you can do is hold on and smile.
Best Bug?
Were the road straight and long enough, the roofless Mistral could hit 282 miles per hour. Wallace achieved this exact velocity in November of 2024 at the ATP Automotive Testing facility in Papenburg, Germany. To underline it, Andy went 282 mph with no roof. The Mistral is a true roofless roadster, not a convertible. Yes, there is a silly, glorified umbrella that a Mistral owner can clip on in case of rain. But let’s be honest; there’s no roof.
The Mistral is all the better for it. I’ve been fortunate enough to drive a number of Veyrons and Chirons and the Mistral bests them all, including the targa-topped ones. By being a true roadster, there’s less between your ears and the guttural, 8.0-liter beastly engine.
There’s just no other sound like a Bugatti W-16 at full trot, and the Mistral is the best way to enjoy this rare experience. Drilling down on the rare part, the Mistral has been reengineered to the point that Bugatti counts it as its own model. Like the 40 Divos and 40 Bolides, the 99 Mistral examples do not count against the 500 Chirons that Bugatti built between 2016 to 2024.
Even though all cars just mentioned share the same basic carbon fiber tub, to ensure not just rigidity but the overall quality that Bugattis are rightly renowned for, the Mistral’s tub and subframes have been thoroughly reworked. The result is a chassis that provides the type of elegance, handling, and velocity the born-again French brand is known for.
It's almost as notable how well the Mistral shields its occupants from the wind. Even at well past license-revoking speeds, my baseball hat didn’t budge. Moreover, Andy and I were able to chat at a normal volume. “What was this thing like at 282 mph?” I ask, dipping my toe into the triple digits. “About like this,” he laughs.
I’ve long found that what separates modern Bugattis from everything else is their stability. Many cars these days accelerate as quickly, if not quicker. But none feel like they’re on roller tracks. None completely maintain their composure during heavy braking. None feel like a hot-rodded Rolls-Royce Phantom. Bugattis do. There’s just an extra layer of composure, a gracefulness simply absent from other super- and hypercars. There’s no squat, no lean, no shudder, no nothing. Some might complain that Bugattis are too isolated. They’re wrong.
Carve ’Em Up
We followed the perfect French weather to an excellent mountain road Andy knew about. You might not think of Bugattis as canyon carvers, but the big beasts are quite happy slicing and dicing. We spent the next couple hours tearing up and down the mostly deserted country road. The sound of the big, boosted 16-cylinder was even more fun here, blasting into and echoing from a verdant French forest.
And oh, the ride quality. Y can see the road imperfections you’re about to drive over, but the Mistral’s magical suspension ensures you don’t feel them. Yes, the stupefying levels of power are staggeringly awesome, but should you let off the gas for just a moment you’re treated to one of the best luxury experiences in motoring. This is the alchemy of the Mistral. It will touch 282 mph when the mood strikes, but it’s calm, comfortable, and elegant the rest of the time. I told Andy we should go wine tasting. That was the vibe.
Speaking of vibes, let's look at the interior. Like, damn bro. It’s just so nice. You know how 25 percent of all comments about new cars sound something like, “Enough with the screens!”? Well, Bugatti designers have long been of this opinion. As such, there’s no central screen, touch or otherwise. Instead, there’s a lovely chrome waterfall that runs down the center of the cockpit that contains four metal knobs. Each knob does have a numeric readout (temperature, fan speed, stuff like that) and there is a way to change the readouts to show different information. Like all VW-era Bugattis, the rest of the interior is utterly fabulous. Which, given the price tags, it ought to be.
The view forward is through a thick steering wheel fashioned from leather, carbon fiber, and metal. Through it you’ll see a big fat analog tachometer showing an indicated 500-kph top speed. The Mistral’s top speed in metric is 454 kph, pretty close to the top. The various drive modes are accessed via a selector knob on the lefthand side of the steering wheel.
Start the engine, and the Mistral defaults to “EB” mode (for company founder Ettore Bugatti), a fine way to drive around especially as the air springs are in their highest setting. For sporty driving, go with Autobahn mode. It sharpens everything up and drops the ride height. Handling mode is even better with a caveat: It’s a little too low for anywhere that’s not super smooth like a track. And there is Top Speed mode, of course.
Two decades since former VW Group majordomo Ferdinand Piëch’s fever dream became reality, and the Bugatti Veyron introduced the world to the very notion of a hypercar, the roofless Mistral is the ideal final iteration of that vision. Next year, or perhaps the year after, Bugatti will begin deliveries of its next product, the Tourbillon.
Yeah, its powertrain cranks out another 200 hp (1,800 PS/1,775 hp), but nearly 45 percent of that power will come from three electric motors and its Cosworth-built naturally aspirated 8.3-liter V-16 “only” makes around 1,000 hp. I’m not going to cry about it, as more power is more power and a giant V-16 is by all accounts totally rad, but I do want to pause and pour some bubbly out for the mighty W-16.
I can think of no better send off for it than the Mistral, a machine that truly shows off what Bugatti is and should be about. Without question the fastest roadster ever—second place would be what, a Porsche 917/30?—the Mistral is more than just a top speed show pony. As is the case with every Bug powered by the awesome and mighty W-16, I was left lusting after something I’ll never be in a position to have.
Deeply elegant, elevated, gorgeous, fun, and timeless, were I lucky enough to have the roughly 6,000,000 base price (before any sort of customization) in my pockets, I would absolutely, 100 percent, no joke purchase and relish a Bugatti Mistral. It’s just that sort of machine. A true final boss. As for the 8.0-liter, quad-turbo, W-16 powerplant, au revoir, et merci pour tous les bons moments.
When I was just one-year-old and newly walking, I managed to paint a white racing stripe down the side of my father’s Datsun 280Z. It’s been downhill ever since then. Moral of the story? Painting the garage leads to petrolheads. I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve always had strong opinions about cars.
One day I realized that I should combine two of my biggest passions and see what happened. Turns out that some people liked what I had to say and within a few years Angus MacKenzie came calling. I regularly come to the realization that I have the best job in the entire world. My father is the one most responsible for my car obsession. While driving, he would never fail to regale me with tales of my grandfather’s 1950 Cadillac 60 Special and 1953 Buick Roadmaster. He’d also try to impart driving wisdom, explaining how the younger you learn to drive, the safer driver you’ll be. “I learned to drive when I was 12 and I’ve never been in an accident.” He also, at least once per month warned, “No matter how good you drive, someday, somewhere, a drunk’s going to come out of nowhere and plow into you.”
When I was very young my dad would strap my car seat into the front of his Datsun 280Z and we’d go flying around the hills above Malibu, near where I grew up. The same roads, in fact, that we now use for the majority of our comparison tests. I believe these weekend runs are part of the reason why I’ve never developed motion sickness, a trait that comes in handy when my “job” requires me to sit in the passenger seats for repeated hot laps of the Nurburgring. Outside of cars and writing, my great passions include beer — brewing and judging as well as tasting — and tournament poker. I also like collecting cactus, because they’re tough to kill. My amazing wife Amy is an actress here in Los Angeles and we have a wonderful son, Richard.Read More
