Bugatti Veyron
The 1,001-horsepower performance benchmark, for a decade
Hot new cars arrive every year, which makes the Bugatti Veyron’s decade-long reign as the pinnacle of acceleration and top speed just that much more incredible.
Ettore Bugatti would have probably approved.
The man who said that, “Nothing is too beautiful, nothing is too expensive,” would no doubt view this megabuck, mega-horsepower sculpture as a modern extension of the company he began building more than a century ago.
Bugatti’s factory in France turned out about 8,000 vehicles in total, including some of the most successful racing machinery of the 1920s and ’30s as well as small runs of luxury cars from 1910-’57, 10 years after his death at age 66. All were known for their power and extraordinary beauty and the surviving cars represent iron-clad investments for their owners.
Following a brief revival in the early 1990s, Volkswagen purchased the rights to the Bugatti name in 1998 and is now the keeper of the Ettore’s legacy.
The car that finally reached (very) limited production was the Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4. The first prototype was seen at the 1999 Tokyo Motor Show.
When the first Veyron left the assembly building in Molsheim-Dorlisheim (the French ancestral home of Bugatti), it was the most expensive production sports cars, ever, with a price tag of about $1.25 million.
For those who dote on superlatives, the mid-engine Veyron absolutely defied description. The car came with an 8.0-litre 16-cylinder engine, made using two eight-cylinder blocks joined side-by-side in a “W” arrangement at a 90-degree angle. Also part of the 64-valve engine package were four turbochargers that helped push the output to a then-astonishing 1,000-plus horsepower at 6,000 rpm and 922 pound-feet of torque at 2,200-5,500 revs.
The Veyron’s power was transmitted to all four wheels on a permanent basis with a seven-speed paddle-shift manual transmission.
You would expect a sports machine of this caliber to deliver exemplary performance and the Veyron certainly didn’t disappoint. According to the manufacturer, zero to 60 mph (96 km/h) flashed by in a scant three seconds and the 200-mph mark (320 km/h) was breached in about 20. Top speed, for those brave enough to make the attempt, was somewhere north of 250 mph (400 km/h). At the time of introduction, that made the Veyron the fastest “production” car to ever bash the boulevard, besting the legendary McLaren F1 by about 10 mph (16 km/h).
Structurally, the Veyron had a single-piece carbon-fibre monocoque body with front and rear aluminum subframes. Fresh air to cool the engine was ducted through a traditional-looking Bugatti horseshoe-shaped grille plus inlets ahead of the rear wheels and on either side of the roof.
At high speeds, a rear spoiler was deployed to create extra downforce, but also acted as an air brake by tilting straight up to produce wind resistance — like a parachute — during an emergency stop.
The interior was obviously coated in the finest of leathers (two-tone, if desired) and was devoid of all but the most essential of instrumentation. This simplicity was in stark contrast to the banks of switches, dials and electronic information displays that festoon other so-called luxury rigs. A large, round tachometer was the main information focus for the driver and was centrally located behind the Veyron’s thickly padded steering wheel.
With such an expensive piece of rolling sculpture, what about service and maintenance? A spokesman for Bugatti said that the company would fly technicians anywhere in the world to perform the required work.
Money aside, reasons for purchasing the Veyron no doubt extended to Bugatti’s rich and colourful heritage, and illustrious racing pedigree.
Thanks to parent Volkswagen’s commitment to a 100-yearold legend, a new chapter in the Bugatti book unfolded, in grand style and with a grand price.