Bugatti CentoDieci: More than you ever wanted to know

See the Bugatti CentoDieci, a tribute to the EB110 based on the Chiron, displayed at The Quail in 2019

CentoDieci translates from Italian to one-hundred and ten. Simple enough as the design pays homage to the Bugatti EB110, the turbocharged V12 all-wheel-drive supercar from the early 1990s. Romano Artioli, the owner of Bugatti at the time, named it EB110 to celebrate Ettore Bugatti’s, the automaker’s founder, 110^thbirthday.

Now, nearly 30 years later, Volkswagen owns Bugatti and wants to celebrate the company’s 110^thbirthday. And what better way to celebrate than a 10-car run of a redesigned Chiron that pays tribute to a nearly 30-year-old classic that itself paid a tribute? True, Bugatti is a French company, but the EB110 was Italian. And even though the Germans put the headquarters back to its native France, they wanted to remember the Italian era of the brand. Hence the Italian: CentoDieci not the French: Cent Dix. Clever.

Frank Heyl, Head of Exterior Design thinks so, “We thought it was a nice play of numbers to actually do an homage to the 110.” As for the car, the EB110 is very ’90s, and Heyl wanted to explore that, “Our intention was to pay homage to this car and era with a new car that has certain citations of (the EB110]. You might want to remember, seven spoke wheels the geometrical shapes, the wedge. Typical ’90s Italian supercar is the wedge, it’s basically all the ’90s supercars are a wedge on wheels.”

Notice the narrow headlights, the five circular vents behind the side window and the seven spoke wheels on the CentoDieci, all cues from the original car. But even more broadly, Heyl used the EB110 for more fundamental design elements, “For designers, the most important thing, before you start to talk about any details or design features or themes or lines is the proportion. Proportion meaning the relation between height and width and length, plus wheelbase, wheel size, overhangs,” Heyl said, “we needed to get the wedge into the car. Wedge meaning a dropping line from the back to the front.”

Starting at the front, the first thing you notice is a much smaller version of the trademark horseshoe-shaped grill. Overall, the pronounced horizontal slots on either side of the grill and the thin headlights give a menacing look. And the white paint makes the CentoDieci look like a battle-ready storm trooper. “This color was a personal choice of Mr. Winkelmann (President of Bugatti) and I think it works really great,” Heyl explains, ”this kind of monochromatic approach. That’s why we didn’t bother to put a french flag on the side or an Italian flag, it should be just black and white, that was cool.”

The wedge theme explains the low front of the car, which required the much smaller horseshoe grill on the CentoDieci, and a big departure from the Chiron’s side profile. “Another feature that is a kind of citation to the EB110 is the visor theme. It’s got a blacked-out A-pillar, the windscreen kind of wraps around in to the side window and that is also the origin of one of our most important lines,” Heyl explains, “on the Chiron you have this what you call the Bugatti line, which is very round, here’s it’s more angular. It’s still there and it’s got a lot of wedge to it as well, it all plays in to the concept of starting low in the front and then climbing to the rear.”

At the rear, the whole theme of the CentoDieci is driven home, “As designers, we are always after proportion, as I said already, and proportion is the sexiest if the car looks wide from the rear. And you get these hips that are really sexy and are muscular as well,” Heyl explains, “that’s why you get a lot of horizontal lines that run really full width, two-meters wide, but inside this is a fragmented taillight, which is really three dimensional. Chunky like, really deep, a lot of x-dimension, and, at the same time, it’s the outlet for the engine bay ventilation. So there’s a mesh behind.”

Ah, yes, ventilation for the quad-turbocharged 8.0-liter W-shaped 16-cylinder engine that produces 1600 metric, 1578 SAE horsepower, which is a lot. 100 more than the Chiron, in fact. The boost in power comes from upgraded turbos and a high rev limit: 7,000 instead of 6,800 rpm. That’s enough power to make it easy to believe Bugatti’s claim of 0-62 mph in 2.4 seconds, 0-124 in 6.1 seconds, and 0-186 in 13.1 seconds. That and the fact the CentoDieci is 44 pounds lighter than the Chiron. But we were talking design.

The Bugatti EB110 served as inspiration for the CentoDieci, both in name and design

Sort of, as Heyl started discussing the CentoDieci’s downforce. The low hood and splitter press the front axle down. To balance the rear, the CentoDieci has a fixed-rear-wing, not hydraulic like the Chiron, and a more effective rear-diffuser. One big improvement to the diffuser resulted from moving the exhaust from the Chiron’s center location off to the sides, but design played a role in the detail, “And the inspiration for the exhaust configuration: two stacked up on top of each other, was an F6 Lightning jet, which has two afterburners stacked up on top of each other,” Heyl explains.

It’s all very cool.

As Bugatti only plans to build ten CentoDieci’s the price shouldn’t surprise you, but it’s still staggering at 8,000,000 euros before tax. That’s $8,800,000 at today’s exchange rates. Bummed you can’t afford that? Don’t worry, they’re already sold out anyway. No matter, celebrate the fact that cars like this exist, that Bugatti loves the wedge shape, and they thought of multiple reasons to use the number 110.

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