Chris Harris Drives... Best of Luxury: Aston Martin DB11, 261mph Bugatti Chiron, Cullinan | Top Gear

Then, 11 years ago, Bugatti lent me a Veyron for a day. It was one of the

best

automotive days of my life and in some way it boosted my career because we published a video of me doing 220 and something like that and a lot of people saw it on the interwebs well now Bugatti has a new car it's called a show and once again I They have given it away for a day what would you do with your one day in a

chiron

obviously I am going to drive all day but before we go a bit numbers 2 million pounds 1500 horsepower 4 turbochargers 8 liters 16 cylinders yes this is the new Veyron , we're actually on the board of Oman and the United Arab Emirates on some awesome mountain roads so let's move around here a little bit yeah awesome or as my American colleague would say weed requires about 400 yards of driving on the

chiron

to realize that this is a profoundly different car I can turn to.

I suspected and feared that it would simply be another one with more power, in other words, the car that was immensely impressive in a straight line at very high speed, but didn't like cornering much. This car loves curves. In fact, on this road it knocks down most other cars and that reduces some parts of the spirit. This is one of the

best

electric steering racks. Apparently I've ever driven there are seven different algorithms overlapping to give you the correct answer. The result is a car that you can position very well and there's the new super sticky Michelin 2 cup tire and then there's the four-wheel drive system, which is useful and then there's the electronics, which means you can leave it open and hang it up .

I'm not man enough to turn it off here and you don't need to look at what happens when you accelerate anyway. Yes, I have no words. To describe what this can do, the ride is level and serene, just designed to demolish road services. I think technically, in this type of service, it's one of the most complete cars I've ever driven and I really didn't expect to say that. the engine i.e. sequential turbo so from zip to around three eight I get two and then the other two come with full afterburning effects. You get a beautiful step around three eight that makes you feel like a school kid again and the numbers. that appear on the dash I can't really speak for them in terms of power and torque, this car has no equal on this road, I don't think anything can stay with it, a 918, maybe with all its vector talk, but once that you get to an open stretch this is just brutal and it's very composed and you know what's fun, it's fun to thread it with precision it's not a car that you let slip and slide or a little bit of slip is allowed in driving mode in driving mode eb, which is the normal In mode you get more flexible driving and earlier intervention in the electronics, but oh my days, what an extraordinary, extraordinary machine, that's my look of surprise because I didn't expect this car to be capable Doing this on a windy road, wow, so it can be a lot better. than expected on a very windy road, but you have to record a suitable speed for 24 hours with the shiron, so we will return to the alamat tomb airport where we filmed the TV movie to head north of 200 miles per hour , this is what you could call a track look at that to see look at that to see very often people like me get a little dismissive of straight line speed, it lacks skill, the circuits are more glamorous, there is something about a car that can go around a circuit that makes it somehow more believable than a car that can go straight in a straight line but the speed is addictive, isn't it?

The speed is addictive. I'm addicted to speed. I have a 3 mile track in front of me and a car with 1500 horsepower. Currently limited to 236 miles per hour, what would you do? Do you know what I'm going to do? This crazy vehicle runs on a tire pressure monitoring system that goes down to two decimal places because tire pressure is critical. I am now running at approximately less than 2.8 bar. it's dangerous so I'm going to concentrate and the pressure drops with the airflow so I'm losing pressure in the front left and rear right keep an eye on it okay and there we are at 236 miles per hour for On the one hand, I think they call it engineering I'm going to slow down, that's outrageous, there's so much airflow over the front tires that they cool down as you go 200 miles an hour and you lose pressure, how crazy is that, so this is it, so the first all-new Aston Martin in It has been looking pretty for a long time, but is it good within 20 seconds of driving this car?

You know immediately that it's a GT, not a sports car, it's quite big and with the shock absorber in place, it's soft, flexible, it's much more comfortable than any rival. an F12 with the dampers down is not as flexible as this one and I like that there is now a guy working at Aston Martin who used to be at Lotus. I won't say his name, he'll be embarrassed but you can feel his Influence in the way this car is very flexible, has good wheel travel and is happy to run full shock travel all the time, so I like it, it fits good with the character of the car, the engine, that's interesting, it doesn't feel as turbocharged. for me but the torque is so huge it frankly overwhelms the rear wheels, as you can see it's raining on a wet wet day like this you can barely use it even with the shock set to soft and that's a bit annoying but really I can change the personality of this car with these two buttons on the dashboard.

I have an s here and a shock here, so this s button gives me the DNA of my powertrains, a

gear

shift motor, that kind of thing and that means it can go from normal to sport sport plus sport plus me gives a loud exhaust and here we go, here's some of this. They have done a very good job of detecting intake noise considering it is turbocharged as well as Aston Martin. The damper button again has three settings. normal, which is called gt mode, I quite like that sport and then the sport and they reaffirm it, you get more support, less roll and less jerking over bumps, but you lose a lot of ride comfort, so on the road I tend to leave it in GT and I have it in the second powertrain mode so I just have better throttle response and a little more noise, not too loud, though do you like the style?

It doesn't photograph well and I'm worried that the whole float c-pillar will age cars like this and the i8 a little quickly, but on the road I really like the wide-hipped look of the

db11

, the numbers are 600 horsepower from the v12 5.2-liter biturbo, 516 pound-feet of torque and weighs 1,770. kilograms Aston claims it will reach 200 miles per hour and feels forceful the front brakes are 400-millimeter steel the

gear

box is the eight-speed ZF unit and the bridge tone called the tire s s-007 how sweet for fast highway driving. I think this car is very well reviewed. The gearbox calibration is also very clever.

The f8 speed just leave it in gear and really think that you don't need to have it in manual from time to time, it's good to have a laugh, but I just leave it in drive and that's it, you're back to reinforcing the cabin of gt credentials and a place to sit. It's lovely, there's a lot going on here. Mercedes' infotainment system doesn't seem all that modern these days, but I love the read here. It is very clear and a new direction for us to go on the square steering wheel, yes you can keep the wind and tire noise well suppressed by supporting the turn of the GT, but what is it like if you drive it very fast?

I guess we should go to a race track. It's horrible on Anglesey today, practically flooded, so there will be more forward-facing side windows than windscreens and I know I'll be accused of being irrelevant, but that's the way it is. I can tell you what the road I have is like. There you go, I've already told you about the refinement, the damping, everything else, so now you need to know what it's like to completely trap the new DB11 within an inch of its life. I'll be happy to do it for you, although it looks very, very, very swamped here, so First of all, we'll see what we can do without releasing it onto the Irish scene.

I'm in the most aggressive chassis mode. I have my shocks on medium mode and I have my traction and stability completely turned off. means the first three gears should be used tentatively in fourth, you can give it the full potatoes, so voila, this is second gear, now you have an idea of ​​how easy it goes, it's a different throttle and it's already completely sideways, so what do we have? We have easily the most balanced Aston chassis I have ever driven. This is an absolutely long wheelbase. Plenty of steering lock and a level of progression towards the outer limits of oversteer that I've never experienced in an Aston.

They can only be. quite pointy, but this is actually very nice, that's partly due to the differential. The last few fast Astons I've driven have been a bit of a nightmare, this thing gets hot and asymmetrical, it works one way and not the other, well this one isn't the same. It feels like a completely new setup for us, Martin, for me, the gearbox is great, it shifts quickly, I've got it in the manual setting, the tyre, the Bridgestone tyre, I find it quite harsh, I mean it doesn't find anything similar to the grip you would find from an equivalent Michelin.

In these conditions, but it is wonderfully progressive when broken. The engine is very interesting. I had to remind myself that it was turbocharged a minute ago because it makes such a big noise and the delivery is so linear that you only realize it's turbocharged. We have to think about how. As much as I'm struggling to get traction, I mean, if I hit the throttle, look, I'm just trying to be honest with you and then through this quick right hand here, if I just turn in, it's going to want to oversteer, there it goes. the brakes are good they are not ceramic for the price they should be ceramic probably the other thing I have noticed is that when you want to turn the car this car has a little bit of rear lean so you can use the brake just to help it now there you go there it goes look I did that on the brakes I didn't touch the accelerator that's quite useful absolutely irrelevant for a big GT car I'll give you that in general, I didn't I hope it's that fun.

It's a very fun car, very fun, very balanced and much easier to slide than I expected. It feels like I could do it for a long time. It feels sturdy, so yes, this is much better. than I expected, first of all, let's get this whole off-road rolls royce thing sorted out because it's not a big surprise almost a hundred years ago rolls royces were regularly going off road because there were no roads and in fact the legend of Rolls- Royce was built on the fact that they were indestructible and could drive on gravel roads. Does it feel wrong to do this at Rolls-Royce?

I'm not sure that's the case. The car is a car, right? It's a huge SUV, it should. to be able to do this the refinement of this thing is extraordinary we have been in it for 10 minutes and it is without a doubt the quietest suv ever built i think in terms of engineering this is incredibly impressive it is huge it is quiet it is so comfortable the ride quality is Yes , has not been seen before in a car of this type, however, and this is the subjective part of the rear three-quarters. I can live with it from the front, I think it seems like a technical phrase for this terrible and slight dilemma, here I am.

Seven hundred and eighty feet up a mountain in this new Rolls Royce that's worth as much as a row of houses in, say, Martha Tidbill and um, there's a big puddle there, I mean, should you really cover the Rolls Royce? I wanted a better word. Shit, I guess you should, right? So the windows are open and I'm going to smear mud on a steamroller, so Rolls-Royce has built an off-roader. It's not a big surprise, really, a man from Rolls-Royce told us last night. How the company had been agonizing for years about whether to build an SUV or not, but I'm not sure I believe it was a commercial no-brainer, this vehicle would always sell because let's face it as the world gets richer.

The rich get more tasteless and want more and more SUVs and that's why Lamborghini makes one and Bentley makes one and Porsche makes one and I can't believe I'm saying this Ferrari is going to make one so here we are on a roll. -royce suv now i will put my cards on the table from the beginning i don't like suvs i can't think of a single situation where i would rather have a suv to live in and use as my daily space a car instead of a family car . Family cars are better. I would prefer to be lower to the ground and not be so heavy and ostentatious, but I have to put myself in someone else's shoes and try to understand why someone might want to buy this car, so I will treat it objectively, I promise that the car It is called Cullinan and is named after the largest uncut diamond ever extracted from the ground.

I was therelast night as the Rolls Royce design team was talking to me about the reasons why this line met that line and that swage did this and that swage did that and I thought to myself, it all sounds very clever but it's a bit strange. I haven't met a single person who says they think kalanin looks good, you know, offers a positive reaction, some people will make excuses. So it's not that bad from this or that angle, but for over £300,000 you shouldn't justify saying it doesn't look that bad. I usually avoid discussing subjective topics, you know, taste. the way things look, but with the two points I have to get involved because I just don't think it looks very good, it looks to me like a Chinese imitation of what they think a rolls-royce suv should be, you know What do I mean when you go to a car show and you see something that looks a little bit alike, that's it, that's it.

The look of this car is just terrible. I think the engineering that has been put into this is impressive. They've been doing it for about three or four years. It is on a custom-made platform. It's an elevated ghost moving underneath, but it's a completely unique platform. This car is critical because if you go and look at a Urus or a Bentayga or a Cayenne or a Touareg you know that they all have points in common, this is not the case. This is a stand-alone vehicle and that's very impressive and means it's very, very, very strong. In fact, and when you have a rigid structure, you have stability.

When you have stability, you can have great suspension, so from the moment you get on this, the ride comfort is on a different level; there is no other SUV that gives you that The feeling of serenity that you get in this car, the mvh, it is incredible, it has about 100 kilograms of loud and lethal material trapped inside the wheel arches on the floor, everything else , it is a quiet SUV, sometimes you are not sure if the engine is running. The highest award for a

luxury

vehicle. When you try to start it again, you turn it off.

I've done it three times today in this car. The low speed ride is very good. When you reach medium speeds again, it has that slightly magical carpet. quality, but occasionally there's a kind of big transverse line, a scene between two surfaces that makes those air spheres vibrate a little and it's not that worthy, I think it could be better, but overall it does that job better than any other car from It's the kind I've driven in a well-made Rolls Royce, so if you want to be quiet and comfortable, this is the best SUV ever made. Now the 6.75 liter twin-turbocharged engine, more power than the Saturn V rocket, yeah, this stuff is heavy, you know? not far from three tons, but when she lifts her skirt, damn, the old power reserve needle drops to zero and just fires, I have no idea how much accelerant it is, but it's more than enough for something this big, I say it.

Because? Because when you get to the first corner you have to stop the damn thing and it almost does, but I wouldn't want it to be more powerful because it's so heavy that you get this feeling of inertia trying to stop it. all that mass is really complicated and then there's the handling, the body roll because it needs to be flexible to maintain that beautiful ride and then it starts to understeer, it's a bit like the ghost in that sense, it makes you think it's completely hidden . that dough and the moment it goes ah I was actually fooling you you're in trouble so don't get too close to the corners don't think for a minute that this can compete with guys like the urus or the bentayga or any of them , in terms of agility, it's a much bigger beast, but I suspect the person buying it won't care if the owner of the Cullinan

drives

it themselves or is driven in it - they certainly drive it.

This is not a ghost. How is? driving then is mastering the driving position is yes it is imperious I'm just putting down the poor people of the world I'm not that comfortable with it but I guess some people are the cockpit well I'll tell you what instead of doing that in motion , let's talk about the cabin every now and then, we'll come back to some more details about how it

drives

and how it makes you feel, so here's the outside of the culinary. I'm not going to walk around and describe the style for you because you can see it, so maybe we'll just leave the exterior alone.

I'm not going to go to the back three quarters no, we are three quarters now, this is the only surprising thing for me the more time I spend with the car, the more this kind of thing works for me, okay, it's a bit Range Rover, it's quite bulky, it's quite powerful and this kind of suggestion that there's a luggage compartment in the back, yes, it works, but the trunk itself, we'll come and have it. At a glance, it's not that big, in fact, with those huge intrusions in the wheel arches because it has big air spheres, it's a small trunk.

If you have two Labradors, one will have to be dominant, so what they have done is sacrifice luggage. space four, expect it to have legroom in the rear and there's plenty of that, let me show you, okay and we see it, it's spacious, but I feel like there's been a bit of a clash of conscience at Rolls-Royce about whether they needed the back leg. room or trunk space and they have stumbled upon a solution that is not necessarily what I thought it would be, but here we go, they know more about these cars than I do, you have touch screens here, you have a usbc down there to charge your devices you control the radio you have different heating functions and you have a glass roof you know what's luxurious and there are so many different options for the back seats? this is the bench option so this one gives you the proper family roles but you can opt for individual back seats and you can opt for the super plush ones that have extra padding and look a little like a first class airplane seat.

The almighty driving seat in front of me lies a world's worth of people poorer than me, so the steering wheel has a rim thicker than a ghost. I quite like the thin edges. Flow rules and rods. This particular little baker is like one on the Phantom 7, but this doesn't have it. It is a rough leathery substance. I don't seem to fully understand it, the rest of the materials are beautiful, I mean it's a step above a bentayga in terms of the materials used, I'll give you that ergonomic ponzi word for where things are is quite baffling .

Sometimes these little buttons here control what your seats do in terms of fans because they will cool your buttocks or heating because they will heat your buttocks or your heated steering wheel if you want a massage, well that should be in the same place but that's down here that's hidden down there why is it down there and those are there and why are they so small that I can't see them? This is the kind of twisted Rolls-Royce I drive because ultimately everything comes from BMW and everything in it. on the leeward side where I'm sitting I can't see this armrest here it feels very cheap you know the rest feels expensive that to me it seems like there is a smell of citroen picasso in that nice instrument package this navigator The screen I quite like because It is quite small, however, it is important to note this when the culinary driver cannot be asked to lean there as if I simply cannot be asked to reach that door.

You can't ask me to be worth almost 330 thousand dollars alone, let's do that. again do that one more time look yeah I can't be it they can't ask me to move six inches so it's a mixed bag it's not as expensive as a ghost and it doesn't feel it it lacks the opulence it lacks some The seat quality is really impressive up front, it's supportive and very comfortable, and that, along with the lack of noise and harshness in the cabin, means this is a very relaxing place and long journeys They will not be tiring. In many ways, this is a car that you don't want to get out of because it's so comfortable, the seat is so good, the ride is so luxurious, and the overall feeling of silence and of being in something that ends in perfection is just so powerful. but you don't want to see it either because when you come out for me, that illusion is shattered.

I just don't want to see it, I want to park it and get away from it. The back three courses are improving. to me, but it's just not seen or I just feel a little embarrassed to be seen like that, which I know is sad and I'm sure there are many of you who think it's beautiful and I've never done it. I let you know have an opinion, a general opinion about the car, so fundamentally influenced by its appearance, but I just don't want to be seen in this, not really, however, the new ghost I have one of those, so what I would say is that if you can deal with the looks this is a great car, if you don't like it get a Phantom and if not just do the world a favor and buy a family car.