288 mph: Is this the fastest car in the world?

Bugatti Chiron

There wouldn't be much of a point to the new Bugatti Chiron if it wasn't faster than the Veyron. Autocar reports that the Franco-German marque will soon find out just how fast the Veyron's successor will be when it attempts to break its 268-mph land speed record.

"We will try to lock in a new world speed record," Bugatti boss Wolfgang Durheimer told Autocar. "I know the Chiron will be faster (than the Veyron Super Sport), but we don't how fast. We have the calculations from our simulations, but it is always different to sit in the car and actually do it."

A couple interesting side questions may be how long the tires will be able to handle its top speed, and how many minutes of fuel the Chiron will have running north of 260 mph.

Since the Veyron's debut, the number of places in the world where cars can run faster than, let's say, 250 mph hasn't increased; Bugatti will be making use of the 13-mile Ehra-Lessien test facility where a Veyron 16.4 Super Sport, sans speed limiter, set the model's current record, which stands at 267.9 mph. (Feel free to round that up to 268 mph if you'd like.) French Formula 1 driver Pierre-Henri Raphanel set the Super Sport's record back in July 2010.

The new Chiron certainly has extra power on its side with 1,500 hp and 1,180 lb-ft of torque on tap from its redesigned 8.0-liter quad-turbo W16 engine, compared with the Veyron Super Sport's 1,183 hp and 1,106 lb-ft output from an earlier version. In terms of official top speed, the Chiron is just 4 mph faster on paper than the Veyron; 261 mph compared with the Veyron Super Sport's 257 mph, but running flat-out with the speed limiter removed will produce a different figure. Based on the auto maker's own computer data, the Chiron should be able to hit 288 mph under ideal conditions.

There's only one way to find out, and Bugatti will attempt to break the old record with officials from the Guinness Book of Records watching carefully — from a safe distance.

The article "Will the Bugatti Chiron hit 288 mph?" first appeared on Autoweek.com.