End of an Era: Bugatti Mistral Retires the W16 Legend

When the last Mistral eased out of Bugatti's Molsheim gates, it felt less like a delivery and more like a closing curtain. That open-top thunderbolt carried with it the final factory heartbeat of the legendary 8.0-liter W16, a powerplant that shaped a generation of hypercars.

The last roar from Molsheim

The Mistral, unveiled early in 2024, was never intended to be a simple roofless Chiron. To make an open-cockpit hypercar behave like a proper Bugatti, engineers rebuilt the carbon-fiber monocoque and retuned the aerodynamics. Every change had purpose: stiffness for precision, airflow for stability, and package integrity so the W16 could sing without restraint.

Only 99 examples were made. Each one uses the same 8.0-liter quad-turbo W16 that pumps out an eye‑watering 1,600 horsepower and 1,600 newton‑meters of torque. Those figures translate into performance that still reads like a dare. Zero to 100 km/h in 2.4 seconds. Zero to 200 km/h in 5.6 seconds. 0–300 km/h in 12.1 seconds and roughly 0–400 km/h in about 29 seconds.

Then came the record run that sealed the Mistral’s place in history. In late 2024, former Le Mans winner and Bugatti’s factory test driver Andy Wallace took a Mistral to Germany’s Papenburg proving ground and hit 454 km/h. That number sits 34 km/h higher than the model’s official target, and it ensures the Mistral remains the fastest production open-top car ever built.

All 99 cars were sold at launch, and they barely appear on the secondary market. When one does surface, steep sums are typical. Prices well above €9.2 million are not unusual for a chance to own the last W16 road car.

Bugatti is moving forward. The new grand project abandons the W16 in favor of an 8.3-liter V16 internal combustion engine that produces 1,000 horsepower and 900 newton‑meters, supplemented by three electric motors to reach a combined output of 1,800 horsepower. It is a new chapter, technologically ambitious and very different in character.

But the Mistral is more than a technical milestone. It is a season in Bugatti’s story: a thunderous, wind-in-your-face farewell for a powertrain that became mythical. For collectors, engineers, and fans of mechanical drama, that final Mistral will always sound like an ending—and like proof that some engines deserve an encore, even if they never run again.