Someone made the Bugatti Bolide road-legal, and it has 1,825 hp
The maddest track car Bugatti ever made, now legal on the public road
This is deliciously unhinged. The Bugatti Bolide is the most hardcore machine Bugatti has ever built, a track-only weapon with a 1,825 hp quad-turbo W16, and British specialist Lanzante has just made one road-legal. Yes, you could, in theory, drive this to the shops, which is a genuinely absurd and wonderful thing to be able to say.
What the Bolide is
The Bugatti Bolide is the wildest thing the brand has ever created, a stripped-out, track-only hypercar built around Bugatti's legendary 8.0-litre quad-turbocharged W16. Here it produces a colossal 1,825 hp, sent through a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox, for performance figures that read like a misprint: 0-100 km/h in 2.2 seconds and 400 km/h reached in around 12 seconds. It was never meant to be driven on the road at all.
How Lanzante made it legal
That is where Lanzante comes in. The British firm has serious pedigree in making the impossible road-legal, having famously done the same with the Le Mans-winning McLaren F1 GTR years ago. For the Bolide, it made the crucial changes needed for public roads: reworking the suspension so the car can actually cope with real surfaces and speed bumps, and cleverly integrating headlights into the Bolide's dramatic, unconventional bodywork. It is careful, expert work that keeps the car's extreme character intact.
The Goodwood debut
The first road-legal Bolide broke cover at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, wearing exposed carbon-fibre bodywork and a striking reflective Klaussen livery. Lanzante is reportedly working on at least two Bolide chassis, though it has not detailed total numbers or pricing. Whatever the figures, this will be one of the rarest and most extreme road-legal cars on earth.
AutoNext Take
We love the sheer audacity of this. Taking the most extreme, uncompromising car Bugatti has ever built and making it road-legal is exactly the kind of beautifully pointless ambition that makes the car world so much fun. Nobody needs a 1,825 hp W16 track car they can drive on the road, and that is precisely why we adore it. Lanzante has the credentials to do it properly, and doing so keeps one of the great W16s alive and usable as Bugatti moves on to new engines. It is another jaw-dropper from a Goodwood absolutely stuffed with them, alongside RUF's boxer-eight and the naturally aspirated V12 Apollo EVO. It also keeps the mighty W16 in the spotlight, just as Bugatti sends it off with one-offs like the porcelain Mistral Blanc Eternel.
