For two decades, the name Bugatti has meant one very specific formula: immense weight, immense power, and an almost clinical detachment from the act of driving. The Veyron and its successor, the Chiron were engineering monuments—quad-turbocharged W16 leviathans that bent physics to their will while insulating their occupants from the violence of their own performance. They were magnificent, but they were also, in the purest sense, appliances. You did not so much drive a Chiron as administer it.
That orthodoxy, it now appears, is under active insurrection from within—and the insurgent is a Croatian electric-car builder who has somehow found himself at the helm of France’s most storied marque.
The Signal From the Top
The signal came from Mate Rimac himself, the Bugatti CEO who has spent the past several years quietly reshaping the company’s trajectory. In a series of recent interviews and teases, Rimac has floated the tantalising possibility of a lightweight, non-hybrid Bugatti Tourbillon—a stripped-back variant of the company’s new V16 hypercar that would jettison the complex hybrid assistance and, most provocatively, offer a manual gearbox. According to reports from Top Gear, Road & Track, and Hagerty, the idea is not merely idle speculation; Rimac has been actively fuelling it, hinting that the company is “open to building a lightweight Tourbillon with a stick” and that Bugatti “can do bold things.” For a brand whose modern identity was built on the ruthless elimination of driver effort, this is nothing short of heresy.
A V16 Masterpiece—And the Radical Idea Beneath It
The context makes the rebellion all the more pointed. The Tourbillon itself—the car Top Gear recently rode shotgun in—is already a fascinating pivot. Its 8.3-litre naturally aspirated V16, co-developed with Cosworth, revs to 9,000 rpm and produces 986 horsepower on its own, supplemented by a hybrid system for a combined output north of 1,800. It is a mechanical masterpiece, but it is still, at its core, a hybrid hypercar in the modern mould. What Rimac is now suggesting is something far more radical: a Bugatti that removes the electric crutch entirely, sheds mass, and hands the driver a third pedal and a gated shifter. Reports from Motor1 and HotCars suggest the CEO has personally advocated for killing the hybrid system on his own hypercar—a move that would have been unthinkable under the old Wolfsburg orthodoxy.
Pushing Back Against the Orthodoxy
That orthodoxy is precisely what Rimac is pushing against. Motor1 reported that Volkswagen wanted an all-electric Bugatti Tourbillon, a vision that would have completed the brand’s transformation into a luxury EV marque. Rimac, instead, pushed for the V16. The manual, non-hybrid concept is the logical extension of that argument: that Bugatti’s future should be defined not by battery capacity or autonomy, but by the visceral, analogue connection between driver and machine. It is a rebellion not just against VW’s electrification agenda, but against the entire philosophy of the modern hypercar, which has spent a decade chasing lap times and acceleration figures at the expense of engagement. A manual V16 Bugatti would be slower than the hybrid version. It would also be the most desirable car the marque has built since the original Type 35.
The Commercial Logic Beneath the Romance
There is a commercial logic buried beneath the romance. Bugatti’s customers, insulated by extraordinary wealth, are increasingly drawn to analogue experiences as the ultimate luxury. A manual, lightweight Tourbillon would be a collector’s piece of the purest kind—limited, uncompromising, and utterly irrational. It would also serve as a potent brand statement, positioning Bugatti not as a relic of the combustion age but as its most defiant standard-bearer. The fact that Rimac’s hypercar technology is simultaneously being licensed to BMW for future models only underscores how central his vision has become to the wider automotive landscape. The man is not merely running Bugatti; he is using it as a laboratory for a broader argument about what performance cars should be.
Whether the manual Tourbillon reaches production remains uncertain. Rimac’s teases are carefully worded, and the economics of low-volume, high-complexity engineering are brutal even by hypercar standards. But the mere fact that the conversation is happening—that the CEO of Bugatti is publicly entertaining a stripped-back, stick-shift V16—is a remarkable shift. For years, the marque’s identity was frozen in amber, defined by a single, monumental engineering achievement. Now, under Rimac, it is becoming something more interesting: a brand willing to question its own dogma. The Tourbillon was already a statement. A manual version would be a manifesto—proof that even at the rarefied summit of the automotive world, the most radical luxury is still the simple, mechanical joy of doing it yourself.
