This Is Wacky! Bugatti Once Said They Won't Do More Records. Mistral Said: "Wait, What?!" 

Although things start to get fuzzy all of a sudden beyond a certain age, I distinctively recall the moment when Bugatti claimed it officially seeks to retire from the record speed-chasing game. A little research was needed to pinpoint the exact time, and it was September 2019. Well, just five years later, they broke the self-imposed oath. Of course, they did! Back then, I was laughing to myself and said they couldn't be serious – once the Chiron is out of the picture and another model is coming to claim the rightful hypercar crown, it will obviously try to top out its predecessor along with the long list of rivals.

Looking back in time, Bugatti's fight against the inexorable forces of nature started in 2010 with an unrestricted Veyron Super Sport that averaged 267.8 mph (430.9 kph) at Volkswagen's Ehra-Lessian high-speed oval. A few years later only, Chinese racing driver Anthony Liu took home the laurels with the open-top Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse by nailing 254 mph (408.8 kph) on the odometer at the same location. Then, in 2019, Andy Wallace, a Le Mans winner and also Bugatti's test driver, got the special-built longtail Chiron to the track in Lower Saxony and hit a record 304.7 mph (490.4 kph). Then they retired from the game, allegedly, and built a limited production run of the model to make it official.

Well, if you do the math on the three records, you'll see that a couple were done with coupe models and only one of them with an open-top. Now the parity is established again, as this week Bugatti revealed the official details behind an earlier November attempt done with the very last member of the W16 supercar team. So, Bugatti's claim that it's done chasing records proved to be the best kind of 'innocent lie,' and a client borrowed them a Mistral for another record speed attempt!

So, the last hurrah of the quad-turbo 8.0-liter monster ends with another spectacular attempt – one that will be disputed when another automaker manages to push past that boundary or fails to do so and then goes back to review Bugatti's claim to find something flawed among the technicalities. Anyway, before that happens, let's celebrate how a customer's Mistral has turned out to be the fastest roofless Chiron and the fastest open-top production car in history.

Bugatti initially said the W16 Mistral would be capable of hitting a top speed of 261 mph or 420 hp, already more than the record 254.04 mph clocked by the Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse in 2013. So, the Chiron and W16 swan song is no less than 21 miles per hour faster than initially claimed – as it reached 282 mph at the Papenburg test track in Germany – or 453.91 kph if you don't speak imperial. Of course, behind the wheel was none other than Bugatti's test driver Andy Wallace. The Le Mans winner drove a one-off Jet Orange and Black Mistral, one of just 99 units that will ever be made, and the owner is also in possession of copies of the other three record-breaking cars!

By the way, the new record stands above Hennessey's Venom GT Spyder run from 2016 when it achieved 265.6 mph, and the Texas tuner and small vehicle producer will have to prove that its newer Venom F5 Roadster can hit the 300-mph mark. Also, there's time for the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut's top-speed run, too. As such, this might soon prove an open invitation to other ultimate-driving cars to try and beat this performance. With this mind-boggling record in sight, it's hard to top that with other novelties from the week, right? Wait, don't render them any less just yet.

Since we're sitting smack in the middle between the 2024 edition of the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the upcoming 2024 LA Auto Show in California, it's been pretty stale. We've seen a bespoke Bentley Bentayga ultra-luxury SUV turn into a WWI tribute on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the little Kia EV3 started deliveries on the Old Continent, Tesla Cybertruck demand evaporated, the Zeekr 009 minivan arrived in Australia with very high pricing, Audi launched a curious jacked-up A3 allstreet with PHEV, and Caterham debuted the Seven CSR Twenty, among others like the 2025 Mazda CX-60.

But then we switch to America, where the novelties have been few but great. For example, the 2025 Dodge Durango isn't available with the 392 Hemi anymore, but the Hellcat still lives; the 2025 Porsche Taycan arrived with two additional GTS models and a new base Taycan 4 with all-wheel drive. Plus, there were three major announcements leading toward the 2024 LA Auto Show: the all-new Cadillac Vistiq three-row electric luxury crossover SUV is priced from below $80k, which is great considering the Escalade IQ is almost $128k. Also, the all-new 2026 Honda Passport was presented in TrailSport and the new TrailSport Elite guises, plus there's a fresh entry-level Acura, the turbocharged 2025 ADX compact crossover SUV. So, what do you think? Was this a good week or not? Also, which of these vehicles is your favorite, and would you like to see it in your dream garage? Keep in mind that record-breaking Mistral has already been taken.