Motoring
BUGATTI VEYRON
TRUE BLEU
Touted as “the fastest and most expensive car in the world,” Bugatti’s Veyron was recently released as a $1.8 million limited-edition model: the Bleu Centenaire. We took the high-powered supercar for a spin in Alsace, France. There it is, in all its glory, outside the deluxe Alsace atelier, a testament to the temples of consumption, power, speed, and even greed: the Bugatti Veyron Bleu Centenaire. This US$1.8 million special-edition Veyron, effectively a standard car with a clever matte and gloss paint job in the original Grand Prix blue of France, was commissioned to celebrate the centenary of Bugatti.The supercar was quickly snapped up by a Middle Eastern client after its unveiling at the Geneva Motor Show, so we can’t drive it, but it’s worth the journey just to get close to such a landmark car. When the Volkswagen Group bought the rights to produce cars under the Bugatti name back in 1998, then-chairman Ferdinand Piëch promised the fastest, most powerful, and most expensive car we’d ever seen. In 2000,Volkswagen founded Bugatti Automobiles SAS and introduced the Veyron concept. In 2005, the renaissance of the legendary brand continued apace with the building of a cutting-edge Bugatti factory in Molsheim, France, next door to the chateau where Ettore Bugatti established his company 100 years ago, and where he produced the first automobile bearing his name a year later, in 1910. Fittingly, it was here also that, after years of painstaking development and fine-tuning, the landmark 2005 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 was finally produced to be released to the world.
The Veyron 16.4 has an eight-liter W16 engine that dishes out even more than the 987 break horsepower quoted, four turbochargers, and 10 radiators. It can blast through the 100-kilometreper-hour mark in 2.5 seconds and on to more than 407 kph. It looks huge in pictures, unreasonably big and unwieldy, thanks to that bulbous boxer’s nose and the psychological effect of the 1,968 kg kerb weight, which is mostly contained in the drive train. In the flesh, however, this is a tight, compact car with Ferrari 430-style dimensions.The styling is more about impact and aerodynamics than traditional supercar beauty.The bluff front end, the muscularity of those sloping flanks, and that monstrous square exhaust (which looks like it should be firing grenades) create a cohesive vision of power.
The briefing takes all of five seconds before Bugatti’s Julius Kruta and I crawl out of the factory in a “workhorse” Veyron (the Bleu is undergoing final detailing for its new customer.) I leave the gate with the trick seven-speed gearbox set in D mode and the firm intention of swinging the power meter up to 987 bhp like some sort of circus hammer act when the road allows. But it barely registers as the car rolls along to the high-pitched whine of the turbos and pumps, which drown out any noise from the monstrous engine. In fact, at low speeds the Veyron is docile, almost asleep and could handle a trip to the shops if you could cope with the fuel consumption,
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NICK HALL
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There are no words to describe the sheer power of the Veyron and the 1,250Nm of torque that rips at your face, stomach, and buttocks as the car takes off.
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Motoring
BUGATTI VEYRON
which is around 34 liters per 100 km, even under mild duress. Surprisingly, it’s as comfortable and luxurious as it is fast, and simple elegance rules in the cockpit.There aren’t 500 buttons to play with, just perfectly machined switchgear that looks as expensive as it undoubtedly is. Aand apart from the color, the only option on the leather is to go for the US$540,000 Hermès edition. As we hit the open road, I pin the throttle to the floor and the whole world fades to black. There are no words to describe the sheer power of the Veyron and, more importantly, the 1,250Nm of torque that rips at your face, stomach, and buttocks as the car takes off.There’s a momentary lag as the four turbos kick into life, and seconds later I find myself a kilometer up the road, diving on the 400-millimeter ceramic front brakes. It’s sensory overload and the manual gearbox option and Sport mode seem like overkill, there’s no way human hands can keep up with a car this fast and I suspect most will end up firmly in automatic mode as the NASA-grade technology takes care of the transmission and leaves the driver to concentrate on the corners that always seem to arrive that bit too fast. When they do, the Veyron steers like a much lighter car, a big Lotus Elise, perhaps. And, with the
Handling mode engaged, which drops the front and raises the wing, it carves through bends like a fat ballet dancer and just dispatches the bend before it has truly registered in one’s mind. But it’s the pure power that sticks with you. It’s so fast, in fact, that if McLaren’s Formula One supercar passed a stationary Bugatti at 200 kph, the Veyron would still break 300 kph first.This car is so fast, it is almost impossible to comprehend. Like a Formula One car, the Veyron is not cheap to keep: Bugatti reckons it costs US$54,000 to run the US$1.35 million machine for a year.Then there’s the epic fuel consumption: it will drain its 100 liter fuel tank in just 12 minutes at its top speed—not statistics that read very well in this day and age.This was the perfect car for the early Noughties, but with the environment now at the forefront of the global agenda, the Veyron is at odds with the world.
Another giant technical leap forward is required if Bugatti is to see its bicentennial as the next supercar will need to be cleaner and a lot greener. There is already talk that the Veyron’s successor will be fuelled by alternative methods, and with Bugatti adopting the role of VW’s roadgoing F1 project, it makes sense for them to make as much of an impact with a green energy supply as they did with this machine. Until then, though, we should revel, guilt-free, in the wonder of the Veyron. Because this is simply as good a car as we will ever see.
Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Price: US$1.35 million Engine: 7993 cc quad turbocharged W16 Power: 987bhp@6000rpm Torque: 1,250Nm@2,200rpm 0-100kph: 2.5 seconds Top speed: 407kph www.fineandcountry.com
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