One exhaust tip for every two cylinders is generally a pretty good rule on cars with cylinder counts in multiples of four. Sure, there are outliers like the old Subaru WRX STI, but this trend is generally a fairly sensible tradition for most sporty cars. The Corvette has a V8, so it gets four exhaust tips. The Hyundai Elantra N has an inline-four so it gets two exhaust tips. However, despite this being relatively normal, it doesn’t always scale sensibly. I mean, what if you have more than eight cylinders?
Well, you end up with something like the Bugatti Tourbillon with the Équipe Pur Sang option pack, essentially a sport package for a seven-figure hypercar. Should a seven-figure hypercar need a sport package? Probably not, but once you enter this echelon, the customer is always right in matters of taste. If they want their Bugatti to be slightly more or less sporty, so be it.
While the Équipe Pur Sang specification bundles in sport seats, extra carbon fiber trim, and offers an array of new colors, leathers, and textiles, it seems primarily focused on aerodynamics. Up front, a more aggressive front splitter fills out the chin, and it’s complemented out back by a new carbon fiber rear wing with air-guiding fins. Yep, this means you can technically get a Bugatti Tourbillon with tail fins, and they’re tasteful enough to genuinely work.
Speaking of aerodynamic tweaks, Bugatti’s been busy finding gains in unexpected places. A new wheel design acts as a giant fan, with Bugatti claiming it offers eight percent more airflow to the rear radiator. Even better, each wheel is unique, with staggered diameters and true directionality. That means four distinct CAD files, but it’s the sort of attention to detail you’d expect for more than €3.8 million.
However, the weirdest addition is a new rear diffuser topped by eight exhaust tips. Technically, that is one exhaust tip for every two cylinders, but when you’re working with a 1,000-horsepower V16, the visual result is simply outrageous. It’s the sort of thing people would’ve poked fun at twenty years ago, but in today’s age of nothing being truly shocking, eight exhaust tips for a V16 isn’t quite as ridiculous as it once was.
Still, the existence of this setup means there are probably billionaires in the world who want a car with eight exhaust tips, enough for four Lamborghini Aventador SV-Js. That’s some serious “Need For Speed: Underground 2” business, and I can’t help but wonder if the Équipe Pur Sang pack will be revered or ridiculed in years to come. Only time will tell.
Top graphic image: Bugatti
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Counterproposal: the proper ratio of exhaust tips is not to cylinder count, but to HP. My proposal: 200 hp for each exhaust tip.
For example: a 1980s V8 Camaro does not need 4 exhaust tips and looks ridiculous with it. A 145 hp car deserves no more and no less than 1 exhaust tip. 90s Mustang? Get that lame shit outta here with your 215 hp V8 and 4 exhaust tips! Even the 300ish hp BMWs with 4 exhaust tips look like posers.
To summarize:
150 hp car? 1 exhaust tip
350 hp car? 2 exhaust tips
550 hp car? 3 exhaust tips (or 4 for symmetry, I know a lot of people hate the look of 3 exhaust tips)
750 hp car? 4 exhaust tips
1150 hp car? 6 exhaust tips
1550 hp car? 8 exhaust tips
The Tourbillon absolutely does not need 8 exhaust tips, and it looks pretentious (only in part) because of it. It’s a 1000 hp engine. I guarantee they could have designed a free-flowing 4 tip (or 5) exhaust system for less weight and no negative impact to HP/torque.
I have a 662 hp car with exactly 4 exhaust tips. Looks good without looking pretentious. Thus proving to me the truth of the rule. It’s not the V8 that makes 4 exhaust tips feel right. It’s the 662 hp.
This is a bad take. Putting 8 tips on a v8 or anything less than 16 cylinders is gaudy. But when you have a fucking 16 cylinder engine, you’re absolutely allowed to rock it.
What about just one that’s really big?
That rear-end may or may not age well, but that hood opening is way too small for that front-end today. What is this, a W16 FOR ANTS!?!!
W16 – 1.6 liters
Remember the VW “unpimp ze auto” commercials? I guess they finally found a use for the leftover parts.
“I’m gonna need more bananas”
– Axel Foley
If you’re gonna buy a 7 figure codpiece/monument to conspicuous consumption it damn well better be able to deafen the peasants who gaze upon it
Here’s an exhaust tip for ya kid… Stay outta dimly lit taillight bars.
The price tag of €3.8 million seems too low for Tourbillon. Volkswagen could easily sell each and every Tourbillion if the price tag is €7 to €10 million as there are many billionaires who think €10 million is the equivalent of chicken feed.
Even Rolls-Royce did well with La Rose Noire Droptail ($30 million each), Boat Tail ($28 million each), Sweptail ($12.5 million), etc.
VW is not selling any Tourbillons. Rimac is.
At least all of the Bugatti’s exhausts probably actually expel exhaust gasses, unlike half of the four tips on a “sporty” Camry V6.
I see this all the time and have always wondered under what situations do those two clean exhaust tips ever get opened up and used. Even on Corvettes where it’s the two outer tips if I am remembering correctly that are always clean and the inside two are dirty.
The Cannonball Run Countach had 12 exhaust tips in 1981.
Try a little harder, Bugatti.
The Benelli Sei motorcycle had 6 mufflers, one per cylinder
First, of all the dead brand names to resurrect for the sake of selling an overpriced toy, Bugatti has got to be the dumbest.
Second, this is the ugliest car I’ve ever seen, and I used to date a girl who drove a brown AMC Pacer.
Now I’m waiting for the new Pierce Arrow, which will have a 13-liter, 72 degree, 20 cylinder, 100 valve engine with 10 turbo chargers making 1900HP at 3150rpm. 28 feet long, weight six tons, 28” rims with 36” tires and will steamroll everything in its path without upsetting a full glass of champagne. Of course.
Make that car in the right shade of Hunter Green, and it could have 50 exhaust pipes,it wouldn’t matter.
That is close to the best car ever made as it stands. Anyone one on here that claims they wouldn’t be creaming their jeans just to get a 10-minute drive is lying, lol.
What about 6, 10, and 12 cylinders? 6 is usually 2 tips, 10 and 12 are often 4 tips (for sports cars).
Why stop at 8? I think the full 16 would have the proper air of excess!
Yeah, can we get a Jason series where cars are edited to have 1:1 exhaust tips per cylinder?
I’d love to see this. Torch’s design exercises that are so batty the Bishop won’t touch them are some of my favorite posts.
Also, I’m still not entirely sure The Bishop isn’t just Torch pretending to be sane.
that is the LCI model by 2030
“One exhaust tip for every two cylinders” is why the exhaust of the Civic Type R has always looked odd to me. Four cylinders and three exhaust pipes just looks wrong.
The opposite also happens, I’ve seen Honda Beats with quad exhaust for their 3 cylinders. Makes me laugh every time
It doesn’t help that the stock CTR exhaust sounds like a vacuum either. You’ve got this aggressive looking set up on a serious performance car and then when it revs it just sounds like a Dyson…
Pure Blood Team? I imagine this wins the award for the most juvenile name of a four million dollar vehicle. Unless they’re actually eugenics fans or something.
In French, “pur sang” means thoroughbred. Like the Ferrari Purosangue in Italian.
To have pure blood, as in racist-speak, would be inverted to “avoir le sang pur”
In Ferrari’s case they were being ironic. It’s only “thoroughbred” in the sense that it only looks like a Mazda rather than actually being built on a mass market Stellantis platform.
The definition of the phrase means “to the utmost degree.”
Connotatively, though, it feels like a dog whistle.
The buyer of this car—with the means to afford it and the values to desire it—will appreciate, in both senses of the word, the dog whistle.
“One exhaust tip for every two cylinders”
I’d never made that connection. [facepalm]
When I read “Sounds Fine Until” I was expecting some audio of weird engine noises.
While the premise of the article is valid, I came away a little disappointed.
Trying to imagine my car with five exhaust exits.
Two side pipes, two rear exits, and a hood stack.
No sir, that’s my exhaust tips, not a 2pdr revolver in my cars butt.
Isn’t that the same exhaust tip to cylinder as a CV2 and a Yugo?
My Yugo only has one tip so I dunno
Oh, I bet it sounds just fine. I counted ’em, but I wanna hear ’em! How can you post such a story without a video or at least a sound clip of that glorious beast in action?
I don’t mind it. Its a lot of cylinders and people are getting a visual reminder of that fact. You gotta get something obvious and special for your millions