There’s a moment, just a few seconds into Jay Leno’s drive in the Bugatti W16 Mistral, when he leans into the throttle and laughs, as nearly 1,600 horsepower comes to life behind him, wastegates hissing like jet turbines, and he quips, “This feels like a Miata,” not because the Mistral is light or nimble in the traditional sense, but because, despite weighing nearly two tons (1,977 kg or 4,359 pounds), the 280+ mph hypercar appears to respond with such uncanny agility that your brain momentarily forgets the physics involved. The Chiron-based Roadster, after all, holds the record for the fastest open-top production car in the world, set by Bugatti test driver Andy Wallace.
This particular example featured on the Audrain Museum Network channel with Leno’s long-time friend, Donald Osborne, riding shotgun. The drive is more than a showcase of mechanical might, but a celebration of the final and most romantic evolution of Bugatti’s now-iconic W16 engine, a layout no other automaker dared to explore at this scale, and one that has powered every modern Bugatti hypercar since the record-breaking Veyron’s debut nearly two decades ago. It’s also a swan-song moment for this powerplant as the upcoming Bugatti Tourbillon will feature a naturally-aspirated V16.
Of course, few are more qualified to evaluate the Mistral than Jay Leno himself, a man whose private collection rivals that of entire museums and includes not only a 1931 Bugatti Type 51 but also a Type 57 SC Atlantic replica. You’ve likely also seen the French marque appear countless times on Jay Leno’s garage.
These machines serve as living links between Bugatti’s golden age and its rebirth in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Leno has long admired the W16 platform for its combination of brute force and engineering excellence, but here, in the Mistral, he seems genuinely taken aback by just how far the architecture has come since that original 1,001-horsepower Veyron first stunned the world.
The Mistral, Bugatti’s first open-top model since the Veyron Grand Sport, is no quick rebody. As we’ve previously reported, every example of the Mistral undergoes extended dynamic validation on both road and track, with engineers pushing each car to its performance limits before it’s approved for delivery. The process includes high-speed stability testing, thermal cycling, and fine-tuning of active aero components. This grueling protocol ensures this near five-million-dollar hypercar performs exactly as intended, long before it arrives at one of Bugatti’s global partner dealerships.
As Leno and Osborne cruise, they reflect on Bugatti’s evolution under the Volkswagen Group, a stewardship that began with Ferdinand Piëch’s audacious vision to resurrect the marque with a car so powerful, so refined, so luxurious and so impossibly complex that even his own engineers initially called it impossible. We chronicled that same legacy in our in-depth coverage of Pierre Veyron, the Le Mans-winning test driver whose name graces Bugatti’s modern-day renaissance. It was Pierre Veyron’s 1928 Type 37 A that Jay owns, which also inspired the “Le Ciel Californien” Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse.
The irony, of course, is that Veyron drove for a company that, in its original incarnation, prized lightweight simplicity above all else. But with the Mistral, it carries no such contradictions. It’s bold, brutally fast, and without a shadow of a doubt, undeniably Bugatti. For more of Jay Leno’s firsthand impressions and thoughts on the W16 Mistral, watch the full drive in the video below.
Source: Audrain Museum Network, Bugatti
