Saar: Only 40 units will ever be made and all have already been sold. Net price: 5 million euros.

At an event dubbed as the “The Quail – A Motorsports Gathering” in California, Bugatti took the wraps off its new, Chiron-based model. Called the Divo, it has an extremely short lifespan. Only 40 units will ever be made and all have already been sold. Price? Bugatti said that each one had a net price of 5 million euros. We had our doubts that since the Divo will be derivative of the Chiron, its 40-unit production might eat into the Chiron’s 500-unit production limitation. However, that’s not the case. Ever since Bugatti started teasing the Divo, it has been adamant on one particular hashtag – #BuiltForCorners.

Powering the Divo is the same engine that does duty in the Chiron. It is an 8.0-litre, quad-turbo W16 engine that puts out 1,500PS of power and 1,600Nm of torque. Transmission duties are handled by a 7-speed, dual-clutch automatic unit that transfers the power to the road via an all-wheel-drive system. Thanks to the setup, the Bugatti Divo can hit 100kmph from a standstill in just 2.4 seconds. The company claims that the Divo’s top speed is limited to 380kmph, which 40kmph less than the Chiron.

So, why a smaller top speed figure even though the Divo is 35kg lighter than the Chiron? Well, the reason is down to the main aim – the abovementioned hashtag. If you are building something to take on corners by the scruff of their neck and shove them aside, one thing you need from your car is downforce. And the Divo has more of that than the Chiron. Bugatti claims that its new model has 90kg more downforce. And since it has more downforce, the tyres could only do their best up to 380kmph. The tyres have even been given some negative camber to get the best of both worlds – handling and top speed.

In terms of design, the Divo has all the traits of a Bugatti but with a track-focused twist. In its overall profile, the top half is smooth and very Bugatti-like while the bottom half is a lot more aggressive in design. Take the new front end, for instance, which has the Bugatti’s iconic horseshoe grille as the centrepiece. The front splitter has been designed to deliver more downforce while diverting more air into front inlets. The rear end of the Divo features a new, height-adjustable wing which is 23 per cent wider than the one on the Chiron. That provides with improved braking efficiency and better downforce to keep the car glued to the ground at high triple-digit speeds. Accompanying the wing is a more aggressive diffuser which enhances the grip of the car, while the quad-exhaust and those three-dimensional taillamps are straight out of a fantasy car designs book.

The result of the obsession with increased downforce is that the Divo is 8 seconds-a-lap faster than the Chiron at the Nardò handling circuit in Italy. Before you ask, no, Bugatti hasn’t released any lap times that the Divo might have recorded at the “Green Hell”, which is popularly known as the Nürburgring. If you think you have been unlucky to miss out on buying one of these? Well, the thing is most of us never really stood a chance. Keep the steep price tag aside, you had to own a Chiron in order to buy a Divo as a prerequisite. Bravo, Bugatti! That’s some way to keep your loyalists happy!