Simply No Comparison: The Bugatti Veyron is in a class by itself
BERND OSTMANN
Published Date: 10/3/05

Despite taking a couple of years longer than first thought, Bugatti finally appears to have delivered on then-Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piech’s promise of making the EB16.4 Veyron the world’s fastest road car. It cranks out 987 hp. Blasts to 62 mph in 2.5 seconds. Hits 250 mph flat-out. Hold on as we take it for an exclusive first drive.

This car can’t be measured by traditional road-car standards. It’s just too powerful, too extreme, too darn fast. Nothing, and we mean nothing, can prepare you for the feeling you experience deep within the pit of your stomach the first time you drive it with real purpose. Comparisons with other road cars do not apply, for there simply is no parallel. Not a fair one at least.

For a while we had felt comfortable, if not exactly at home, behind the beautifully crafted aluminum and leather steering wheel of the $1.2 million EB16.4 Veyron. Confident its limits were not beyond our control as we came to grips with it along Bugatti-parent VW’s Ehra-Lessien test track, 30 minutes up the road from the German carmaker’s vast Wolfsburg headquarters. Not even a rain shower that drenched the long oval track earlier in the day had given too much cause for concern. In fact, the cool temperatures had proven a boon for the Bugatti engineers who feared it may get too hot to take a stab at its 250-mph top speed.


However, that was before we pulled into the makeshift service facility erected on the track’s perimeter and watched as Bugatti’s technical director, Wolfgang Schreiber, inserted a second key into a slot to the left of the driver’s seat. Talk about transformation. In this configuration—just one of three in which the Veyron can be programmed—the chassis squats 2.5 inches at the front and 2.75 at the rear. The diffuser flaps in the front close, and the rear spoiler sits at a slight 2-degree angle. The idea is to provide the car with minimal drag as the electronic speed restrictor limiting the low-slung Bugatti’s top speed to 233 mph is sidestepped to release its full potential. It is described as the “top-speed” setting, though on second thought, it ought to be labeled hyperspace.

Every time we pull back on the gear lever to slot home another ratio in the closely stacked seven-speed double-clutch (DSG) transmission, all hell breaks loose. The 8.0-liter W16 engine mounted behind us bellows in anger as we hold the throttle down hard, the needle on its horsepower dial arching its way past the traditional four o’clock position to indicate maximum power has been released as the all-wheel-drive Veyron slams violently forward as though it is mounted on a rocket sled. The sound the car makes, even from within the full-face helmet, makes us wonder how on earth it could ever be street legal.

If it all sounds like an exaggeration, consider the acceleration figures and you might, just might, begin to appreciate the brutality of it all from the thigh-hugging confines of the deeply padded driver’s seat. Although the times are yet to be independently verified, Bugatti claims its new two-seater will hit 62 mph from a standstill in 2.5 seconds, 125 mph in 7.3 seconds, and amazingly, given it tips the scales at a rather portly 4300 pounds, 186 mph in just 16.8 seconds. The words “battering ram” come to mind.


For comparison, a Porsche Carrera GT needs 34 seconds to reach that last mark, and we don’t recall anyone describing it as slow. No less than 987 hp delivered at 6000 rpm—more than any other road car on the planet, and by some margin—dishing out a time-warping turn of speed. That the EB16.4 Veyron requires less than half the time it takes the Porsche is a good indication of the sort of force placed on your body as you nail it hard and keep your right foot planted. In the first few degrees of throttle travel, things are quite unremarkable. But as the engine’s four turbo-chargers spool up, there is a violent surge of acceleration as the revs rocket up to the engine’s 6300-rpm cut-out point. When you’re engaging in such action, the air is literally forced from your lungs as the forces build… and build… and build. This is road-car performance at its most potent. It’s backed up by a thumping great 921 lb-ft of torque that’s fed to all four wheels via a Haldex multi-plate clutch and DSG that’s positioned ahead of the engine in a bid to provide the best possible weight distribution. Developed and built by British transmission specialist Ricardo, which claims the magnesium-housed unit takes just 150 milliseconds to shift and can be operated manually or left in automatic mode. The engine and gearbox weigh 1400 pounds, close to one-third of the Veyron’s weight.


The suspension itself is fairly conventional, relying on a combination of double wishbones all around with conventional springs, dampers and antiroll bars. To ensure stability remains constant across the Veyron’s wide speed range, it also incorporates a specially developed hydraulic system that varies the ground clearance in three distinct stages. In the standard setting, the car’s carbon fiber body sits five inches off the ground, the front diffuser flaps allowing air to travel underneath the car remain open, and the rear spoiler sits flush with the rear bodywork. At speeds greater than 135 mph—or when the driver chooses to engage it via a button on the center console—the body adopts what is called the handling setting, automatically lowering to 3.14 inches of clearance at the front and 3.7 at the rear, the diffuser flaps stay open, and the spoiler motors out and is deployed at an angle that varies between 6 degrees and 26 degrees to provide up to 771 pounds of downforce.

Beyond this is the so-called top-speed setting dialed up by Schreiber during our run and allowing the new Bugatti to run all the way to 250 mph. Besides twisting the second key, you are also required to run through a safety list, which includes such things as a tire-pressure check. Overall, the Veyron’s drag co-efficient varies dramatically—from a low of 0.39 in the standard setting to a downforce-induced 0.42 in handling, and a slipperier 0.36 in top speed.

Although the $1.2 million price is breathtaking, Bugatti is supremely confident it can find 50 customers per year for the EB16.4 Veyron. Employees at the company’s showcase factory on the outskirts of Molsheim in France are expected to produce no more than 300 cars in total during the next six years. North America is already proving a lucrative market, with the majority of the 16 confirmed orders to date.

BY THE NUMBERS
173 mph:Takeoff speed for a Boeing 737
229.9 mph: F1 speed record by Antonio Pizzonia in a Williams-BMW at the ’04 Italian GP
240 mph: Top speed of an Andretti Green Indy Racing League car
241.428 mph: Closed-course speed record set by Gil de Ferran in his Honda-powered Penske Racing Reynard at California Speedway in 2000
250 mph:Top speed of the Bugatti Veyron. It goes from standstill to 250 mph in 55 seconds
11 hours, 9 minutes: Time it would take to get from Los Angeles to New York City @ 250 mph
To prove that there’s always a bigger dog on the block... a nitro-burning Funny Car accelerates to 100 mph in 0.9 second, hitting 230 mph in 2.03 seconds and topping 260 mph in 3.25 seconds. But you can’t do that and drive it to the grocery store, too.