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sur la terre unique rides
Managing Editor, James McCarthy, gets all-consumed by the power of the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport. PICTURES: Brown Image Production
>>> It is a typical Thursday afternoon. The clock seems to have frozen somewhere around the three o’clock mark and I am embroiled in an argument with Senior Editor, Steve Paugh, over whether a chocolate covered Hob Nob is better than its Digestive counterpart. The ringing phone pours water on what is becoming quite a heated debate, and I pick up the receiver to be met by the voice of Libby Thompson from Juliet Jarvis Consultancy in the UK. “Hi,” she trills cheerfully. “Are you interested in covering the Bugatti Veyron for Sur la Terre? It will be in Doha next week.” As my stalled heart begins pumping again, my mouth goes dry and I reply very much in the affirmative.
The biscuit conversation completely forgotten, I return the receiver to its cradle and calmly inform Steve and Deputy Editor, Mina Kavcar, that the SLT Editorial team should not make plans for Monday. We will be busy.
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY...
So, here I am, sat in the passenger seat of the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport, the cabriolet version of what is arguably the most thrilling car of all time. In the driver’s seat is the affable Pierre-Henri Raphanel, Pilote Officiel for Bugatti, who concurs with the previous statement wholeheartedly. “This car is one of a kind. Everything came together at the right time to give birth to the Veyron,” he explains above the buffeting of the Doha wind and the Eurofighter Typhoon-esque whining of the giant air intakes behind us.
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sur la terre unique rides
“Ferdinand Piech, who was in charge of Volkswagen, fought hard to buy Bugatti. He closed the deal in 1998 and almost immediately set about creating this,” Raphanel says, gesturing with his hand as he flicks the 7-speed, double clutch gearbox into what can only be described as ‘warp speed’ and plants his foot firmly into the carpet. The needle of the rev counter leaps to the red area of the gauge, and the full W16 quadturbocharged choir pipes up behind us. All of a sudden the support car, carrying Steve, Mina and Abdullah Benni, our snapper for the day, becomes a quickly receding white dot in the rear view mirror. My eyes, by this point, are somewhere around the back of my head, before Raphanel slams on the anchors to demonstrate the immense stopping power of this extraordinary car. I physically feel all the contents of my skull, including my eyeballs, realigning themselves under the pressure of centrifugal forces that I am pretty sure space shuttle pilots endure when breaking earth’s atmosphere.
For certain, the custom-built carbon ceramic brakes are glowing the same colour orange as the nose of the Challenger upon re-entry as, in tandem with the huge rear wing (which rises after the car hits 200km/h and doubles as an airbrake with the stopping power of a VW Golf), they gently - but quickly - stop the car dead. This is a vehicle that is capable of stopping 0.2 seconds quicker from 100km/h to 0 than the 2.5 seconds it takes to accelerate to that speed. Raphanel looks over at me and grins. “See, it is an engineering masterpiece,” he says with all the pride of an honour-roll parent on graduation day. “If VW tried to start the Veyron project today, it would never happen. Back then, we had the market, the money and, most importantly, Piech. Without him we wouldn’t be sitting here now.” And he is right. When VW undertook ownership of the Bugatti marque, it became an almost obsessive pet project for Piech. Armed with an
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unwavering dream and a seemingly unlimited budget, he demanded that a crack team of designers and engineers produce a car that was capable of delivering 1000 metric horsepower with a top speed of 400km/h. It had to be the fastest road car in the world, while remaining true to the three pillars of excellence (Art, Form and Technique) set down 90 years previously by company founder, Ettore Bugatti. No easy task, but in those halcyon pre-credit crunch days, there was an unlimited budget. The only catch? Failure was not an option. Several engineers, a few prototypes and a considerable amount of cash later and the first iteration of the Bugatti Veyron was unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1999, before moving into production in 2004 and debuting in Sicily in 2005. The Grand Sport took its bow three years later. Weighing in at just under two tonnes, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 boasts a mid-mounted 8-litre W16 quad-turbocharged power plant, that delivers 1,001 metric horsepower (987 brake horsepower) and a top speed of 408.5 km/h.
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sur la terre unique rides
A dream had been realised and the world’s fastest, most expensive road car was brought to bear in a world that had become more focused on hybrid technology and cutting costs. In truth, though, there are not enough superlatives (or column inches) to describe the Veyron. On paper, it is the perfect hypercar. Aesthetically stunning, aurally astounding and mathematically unsurpassed. Top Gear’s Jeremey Clarkson describes it as ‘the motoring world’s greatest science project,’ and earlier this year, named it the programme’s Car of the Decade. It is so well engineered, explains Raphanel, that even in the manufacture of the doors, there is a tolerance of just 0.2mm given to the spacing of the adjoining panels.
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
We finally arrive at Sur la Terre’s top secret test track and Raphanel just looks over at me with a grin and asks if I am ready. A leather-covered key bearing the famous EB logo is dropped into my eager paw and I sit there staring. This is my Excalibur. Yes, I love Lamborghinis with their brute force and menacing looks and yes, I go weak at the knees every time an Aston Martin glides past me on the commute to SLT Towers, but the Bugatti is something rare. It is altogether more...mythical; a bit like finding a unicorn laying Faberge eggs at the bottom of your garden. As Raphanel explains the readouts, I insert the key (the inverse action of Arthur drawing Excalibur from the stone), turn it and press the big round “start” button. You expect a bit more theatre, but in reality, when that W16 fires up right behind your head, none is required. The air scoops have a Lear-jet like whine as I ease the rolling rocket out onto the tarmac for some ground-level strafing. The first thing that hits me is the ease of the ride. I would expect nearly two tonnes of what is essentially an engine and a 26-gallon fuel tank to be like steering the Queen Elizabeth 2 into the marina of the Pearl Qatar. However, with the double clutch imperceptibly shifting cogs, coupled with the all-wheel drive system (which automatically adjusts and splits torque to the front and rear axles) and power steering, the Veyron feels like a much more nimble beast than its kerb weight suggests. It is only when cornering that you feel the weight of the car. While the Veyron sails smoothly into the apex and shoots out in a clean line, you do feel the enlarged turning circle, which is in part due to the Michelinmade Pilot Sport PS2 tyres, the world’s largest and the only rubber to support a safety guarantee up to 420km/h. However, this does mean that each set of four, with wheels, will cost you around QR182,000. My first tentative tilt in the Veyron is undertaken in the fairly sedate “D” (drive) mode of the automatic gearbox, which is designed to harness the awesome power of the Veyron and temper it to enable the car to pootle around in the traffic of an urban sprawl. The fun starts when you nudge the gearshift one more notch to the right into “S” mode. All of a sudden, the car holds the lower gears longer and allows for a quicker downshift enabling me, should I wish, to “destroy the car in front,” as Raphanel succinctly puts it. On my second pass, I slow the car to a rolling idle and activate the “S” mode. The needle on the rev counter jumps like a tazed cat and the car sounds like a jet about to hit take-off speed. I plant my
loafer on the accelerator and BOOOM! The world becomes a blur as the horizon rushes up to greet me. The speedometer is climbing fast and the double-digits are melting away in seconds. I am soon into the hundreds. Even at this speed, the gear shift is unnoticeable. I am gripping the wheel tight, even though I don’t have to, as you can drive this car with just an index finger - even at this speed; such is the grip of the Michelins and the efficiency of the all-wheel drive in a straight line. However, I am trying to anchor myself, as my pulse is thumping double time to keep my adrenalin in check. I pass Abdullah, desperately snapping away, trying to freeze the moment through a lens, at a face-melting 300km/h. I can hold it in no longer and find myself just bawling out a deep-rooted, almost primal shout of sheer joy. Raphanel is laughing to my right. He has seen this a thousand times before. I am not the first, and most certainly will not be the last, to be acting like the kid picked to pilot the Concorde. Even though you know that this car is incredibly safe at these, frankly, ridiculous speeds, there has to be an element of fear or it just wouldn’t be fun. The rate of acceleration is as mind-boggling as it is relentless. The needle continues rising past 280km/h at the same speed as it did between zero and 100km/h.
sur la terre unique rides
I was shaken from the almost hypnotic sight of the needle completing nearly two-thirds of the dial when I began to run out of straight road and the roundabout that had seemed so far away less than a minute ago was now bearing inexorably down on me. “Don’t worry,” coos Raphanel. “Just hit the brakes hard. You will stop.” Sure enough, I press firmly on the brake pedal and feel the full force of the ceramics and that vast, computer-controlled, surfboard of an airbrake. It allows me to seamlessly flick the shift back into “D” and smoothly-as-you-like ease the Veyron into the turn and carry on as normal. Time flies as quickly as the Bugatti when you are in the driving seat, and Raphanel indicates that it is time to get back on the highway. As we pick our way through the traffic en-route to the Ritz Carlton, I find lesser metals, such as Land Cruisers and Range Rovers, are keen to let us pass for a chance to rubberneck as the Veyron cruises by; for me, this sums up the essence of the Bugatti beautifully. Qatar is an emirate where Lamborghinis, Astons, Bentleys and Rollers are so plentiful that they have become part of the street furniture; a place where Ferraris and Porsches speed past and don’t even garner a second glance from passers-by. In stark contrast, the Veyron will ALWAYS turn heads. It will always command respect on the road simply because the car, like the dream that inspired it, is a rare, paradigmshifting occurrence. That, my friends, is why the Bugatti Veyron, with its status amongst the pantheon of automotive gods already secure, is the most Unique Ride of the lot.
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