The Bugatti Divo Couldn’t Get Much Lighter and Still be a Bugatti

When Bugatti finally revealed the Divo, a $5.7 million Chiron-based coachbuild project, it ended up looking a lot more like the Chiron than we thought it would. But that wasn’t the only surprise. Despite Bugatti claiming the Divo’s development had prioritized handling, the new car is only 77 pounds lighter than the Chiron. Considering the Chiron weighs about 4,400 pounds, we wondered why the weight loss wasn’t more substantial.

At the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance last weekend, we got our answer during a conversation with Pierre Rommelfanger, the Divo’s project leader. When asked if there were any battles he lost during development, he immediately brought up the car’s weight.

“The battle is we start from a very high level,” said Rommelfanger. “So of course we would like to reduce weight more, but this is very difficult if you start with a car like the Chiron where nearly everything is carbon fiber. I would not say we lost any battle, but of course, there is always the thinking to find the right balance of how much to do because we want to give a car to the customer which still can be used for driving long distances. You could have done some things more extreme, but I think that’s not matching our customer expectation.”

Theoretically, Bugatti could have stripped out the interior to further reduce weight, but as Rommelfanger pointed out, “That was not the target.”

So despite being the most track-capable Chiron derivative, the Divo is still first and foremost a Bugatti. Besides, those who can afford one of the 40 Divo models are likely to have another supercar dedicated for the track, so the missed weight savings might not be that big a deal to owners.

 

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