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Elon Musk Slams Bugatti Tourbillon for Being “Slow, Expensive, and Outdated”
Twitter Warfare Ensues
Bugatti just unveiled its Tourbillon, a successor to the Chiron that bucks every current trend in the automotive industry. Downsizing the engine to be more fuel-efficient? Nope, it got bigger. Gluing a flatscreen TV onto the dashboard? Not a screen in sight (except for the small one that pops out of the dash). Hands-free autonomous driving? It likely won’t even have lane-keep assist.
The result? A $4 million hypercar featuring a monstrous 9000-rpm 8.3L V16, an intricate watch-like gauge cluster, and a prioritization of emotion and driver engagement over features and raw performance (which it still has plenty of).
Unfortunately, this competes directly with the design philosophy of EV giant Tesla. Just minutes after the Tourbillon was unveiled, Elon Musk tweeted a screenshot of its performance figures and interior saying,
Don’t see where the $4M went. Big inefficient engine, interior from the 1930s, no driver assists, similar performance to $90K Model S Plaid. Slow, expensive, and outdated. Do better Bugatti…
Many enthusiasts quickly responded in defence of the Bugatti, claiming its detail-oriented interior was much more refreshing than Tesla’s attempts at “digital minimalism”…