The Bugatti Divo's Biggest Competitor Is Sitting Right Next To It

You may have heard of it, its called the Bugatti Chiron Sport.

The Bugatti Divo is the latest off-shoot of the Bugatti Chiron. The hypercar has been thoroughly reworked to once and for all end the one major criticism of the Chiron and its Veyron forebear, namely the handling. With an advanced aero pack, stiffer suspension, 77-pound lighter curb weight and 198 pounds more downforce than the Chiron, the Divo is claimed to lap the Nardo handling circuit a full 8-seconds faster.

However, priced at almost $6 million, it is more than twice as expensive as the Chiron and only 40 will be built. That is a lot of money for improvements you may only appreciate a fraction of the time but let’s be honest, this corner of the market is all about diminishing returns. Yet it does beg the question, how bad could the Chiron really be around the bends that customers can justify spending twice as much on the Divo?

While 8 seconds is an eternity on the race track, the Divo still shares its quad-turbo 1,479-hp engine with the ‘cheaper’ car and away from the focused confines of a racing circuit, their accelerative abilities should be very similar. The Chiron is already a major step forward in the way it feels and responds to driving inputs, compared to the Veyron anyway.

In Handling Mode, it stiffens up the suspension, weighs up the steering, angles the rear wing for additional downforce and relaxes the electronic traction control settings. Road testers who have been fortunate enough to push the Chiron to its limits have found that the controls are well-weighed, the car feels well planted and the whole package is a lot more controllable than before. But, 8-seconds slower than the Divo, well that's a big gap.

So what about the Chiron Sport then? Unveiled at Geneva this year, it already claimed to offer 'significantly improved handling and even greater agility' than the Chiron according to Bugatti. Changes included a dynamic handling package with a stiffer suspension and a new dynamic torque vectoring function.

A new wheel design and carbon fiber wipers contribute to a 40-pound weight reduction over the standard Chiron (and only 37-pounds heavier than the Divo) and this is the important bit, it is also 5-seconds quicker around the Nardo handling circuit than the standard car. Now a 3-second gap between the Sport and the Divo suddenly sounds a lot less noteworthy.

The Chiron Sport has a base price of $3.26-million, that's almost $800,000 more than the normal Chiron but still just over half the price of the limited-edition Divo. Whether the limited run, unique body style and fractionally better handling are worth approximately $2.6-million more is a moot point, all 40 Divos have already been sold.

What it does prove though is that the Chiron is far from being merely a straight-line specialist. It has also, by default, become something of the billionaires’ budget hypercar. The Chiron Sport is the perfect Divo alternative for the cash-strapped hedge fund manager.