Car designers do not simply draw cars. To be a great one, you need a deep technical understanding, and must form productive relationships with everyone involved in making a vehicle come to life. Bugatti design chief Frank Heyl is a perfect example.
“To make a car that goes 300 miles per hour, it’s not like you make any car. It requires certain skill sets,” Heyl tells Motor1. “In terms of aero, at one point at those speeds, we’re talking about Mach-scale effects that compress air because it’s so fast.”
Heyl graduated with a Master of Arts in Vehicle Design from the Royal College of Art in 2005. He joined Bugatti as an exterior designer in 2008. His career at the French automaker spans from the 267-mph Veyron Super Sport to the new Tourbillon. In 2023, he took over the top design job at Bugatti following Achim Anscheidt’s retirement.
Photo by: Bugatti
‘To make a car that goes 300 miles per hour, it’s not like you make any car. It requires certain skill sets.’
A core tenant of the company’s design philosophy is that every element on a Bugatti must serve a purpose. A Chiron Super Sport 300+ has a long tail not because it looks cool—though it does—but because it reduces drag.
“There’s a story that is totally authentic to the purpose of the vehicle, and it’s only if you understand all of these aerodynamic phenomena that you can weave this in from the very beginning,” Heyl says. “It’s not like we’re thrown a certain package across the fence of the design center, and then we put a nice candy wrapper around it.”
The Tourbillon is the third, all-new model in Bugatti’s modern era, following the Chiron and Veryron. It’s also the first car produced after Bugatti merged with Croatian electric hypercar company Rimac. CEO Mate Rimac wanted to reinvent what a Bugatti could be, abandoning the Chiron and Veyron’s chassis and trademark quad-turbo W-16 engine.
Instead, the Tourbillon combines a naturally aspirated Cosworth V-16 with a three-motor hybrid system for an astounding 1,775 horsepower. After the Chiron Super Sport 300+, Bugatti said it was done chasing absolute top-speed records, yet the Tourbillon still manages 277 mph flat out. Even in a world saturated with hypercars, it’s unlike anything else out there.
Photo by: Bugatti
Heyl’s most proud of the Tourbillon’s underfloor, with its two six-and-a-half foot long venturis starting just under the seats, forming the diffuser. That might seem counterintuitive for a designer to highlight the floor, which you can’t see, but Heyl tells us it’s the thing that enables all that stunning bodywork and the incredible engineering it shrouds.
A diffuser is one of the most efficient ways to create downforce, by accelerating air under the vehicle without a huge drag penalty, which would reduce top speed. Bugatti’s switch from the wide, W-16 engine with its quad turbochargers mounted on the sides to a narrow, 90-degree V-16 made room for taller diffuser channels. Heyl says that the Tourbillon is aerodynamically neutral—no downforce, no lift—at top speed.
The diffuser also doubles as the car’s rear crash structure, an engineering feat in itself, and it has many other, slightly less exciting functions.
Photo by: Bugatti
Photo by: Bugatti
“There’s the license plate, which you have to take into account,” Heyl says. “A 52.0-centimeter license plate for the EU and UAE markets, or a 6-by-12-inch for the US market, or a Japanese one.
“The way the diffuser is shaped is the least amount of height built up on the rear—because the rear is very slim proportionally—while still fitting all those license plates. Which might be a mundane kind of thing, but those are massive limitations to the design of a car, especially on the rear, which you have to deal with.”
Of course, a Bugatti can’t be all function and no form. The design team worked closely with the engineering team from the beginning, both to define the mechanical layout of the Tourbillon, and to sculpt its looks. Automotive beauty, Heyl says, is all about proportion, so that was a main area of focus.
“If you get that just right, everything develops from the roof downwards.”
Photo by: Bugatti
‘There’s a story that is totally authentic to the purpose of the vehicle, and it’s only if you understand all of these aerodynamic phenomena that you can weave this in from the very beginning.’
The Tourbillon is only a couple inches longer than the Chiron it replaces, and its wheelbase grew only a smidge more than an inch. Wheel sizes of 20-inch front and 21-inch rear remain the same, too, though the overall diameters of both the wheels and tires increase slightly.
But despite the similar dimensions, the Tourbillon looks much more dramatic. Fixing the seats directly to the carbon-fiber monocoque, and instead making the pedals adjustable, allowed Bugatti designers to lower the Torbillon’s roof. That had the effect of making the car look much more muscular while reducing the frontal area, a huge boon for cutting drag.
Heyl reminds us that we shouldn’t be too obsessed with a drag coefficient number, since it’s just that, a coefficient which is always associated with surface area; If your frontal area is huge, having a low drag coefficient doesn’t mean all that much in the real world.
Photo by: Bugatti
It’s obvious, but the Tourbillon also has to look like a Bugatti. Beyond the C-shape “Bugatti line” running along the side, there’s the two-tone paint scheme, the horseshoe grille, and other details that reference Bugattis of the past. Especially those designed by founder Ettore and his son, Jean. But in proportion, the Tourbillon is much more extreme than any Bugatti before it, something Heyl says is only possible when the designers and engineers work together from the very beginning.
Designing a car is an exercise in balancing needs. That’s everything from the spectacular, like how to fit a V-16 engine that’s well over three feet long, to the mundane, like where to put the parking sensors. The process must be completed for a reasonable cost, even on a $3 million plus Bugatti, and the car needs to meet all relevant safety and emissions regulations. And while you’re at it, make the thing desirable.
“I always like to regard it as a huge puzzle, and you can only solve it if you all work together,” Heyl says. “Ultimately, there’s hundreds of people involved, total experts, world-class people in each of their fields… and to work together and create a product that will be there forever, or at least the next 100 years. It’s a great honor. I wouldn’t want to miss it.”
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