There simply aren’t enough superlatives to describe the Bugatti Veyron. Calling it fast, opulent and stupidly expensive does not convey the unbridled lunacy of the world’s fastest car. It’s even harder to describe driving a Veyron, because there is nothing else like it on the planet.
Driving one isn’t simply mind-blowing. It’s a pseudo-spiritual experience that envelops all your senses the instant you mash the throttle and then politely returns you to the world of mere mortals when your courage runs with the depression of the brake.
Nothing you’ve ever driven prepares you for it. By this point, the Veyron’s story is well known. Volkswagen bought the rights to one of the most storied names in automotive history, decided to create the supercar to end all supercars and gave its best engineers a blank check. Their only requirement was to build a car capable of 250 mph.
Work started in 2001. The first Veyron arrived in 2005. It dropped jaws. The car’s massive eight-liter, 16-cylinder engine – essentially two V8s, with four turbochargers – delivered 1,001 horsepower. The Veyron could hit 60 mph from a standstill in a mind-boggling 2.8 seconds and achieve 253.81 mph if you had the room, not to mention the grit, to do it. The car quickly set the record for fastest production car.
But Bugatti didn’t stop there. It ripped the roof off to create the Grand Sport, then offered an endless stream of special editions, one-offs and custom models for the one percent with $2 million in pocket change for the privilege.
That still wasn’t enough. Bugatti’s engineers squeezed another 200 horsepower from the engine to create a WMD called the Veyron Super Sport. It tops out just a bit north of 267 mph. Then they built a drop-top, which recently snagged the record for world’s fastest production roadster.
Which brings me to today.
I’ve been waiting nearly 10 years to drive a Veyron. Now, Bugatti doesn’t just hand one over like it’s a mere Bentley or Porsche. You are chaperoned by, in my case, a man named Butch whose card reads, simply, “Bugatti Driver.” Patrick Bateman has never experienced this level of envy.
Butch tells me, essentially, “Don’t do anything supremely stupid,” then climbs behind the wheel to take me for a spin. He wants to recalibrate my metrics for speed and power before turning me loose in a $2.5 million car capable of covering 373 feet per second when running flat-out.
Such calibration is necessary, Butch says, because there is nothing else like the Veyron. Nothing you’ve ever driven prepares you for it. And it completely perverts the mind. After driving one for a few months, Butch got into his father’s criminally fast German sports sedan and grew worried when he floored it.
“I thought there was something wrong with his car,” he says. “This just warps your mind like that.”
Warp is very apropo.
Butch puts the throttle down. I’m suddenly convinced we’re riding the shockwave of a thermonuclear explosion. My neck hits the back of the seat, hard. Things go blurry, then very blurry, as the horizon approaches far faster than seems prudent. The Veyron isn’t even breathing hard.
Convinced that I am suitably awed by, and respectful of, the car’s awesome power, Butch lets me get behind the wheel.
You’d expect the Veyron’s starting sequence to involve flipping a few toggle switches, scanning your thumb across a biometric scanner, pressing a big red button with “Are you sure?” milled into the metal and performing a short incantation. No. I put a key in a hole and turn it.
It’s like free-fall, but horizontal. There’s enough sound deadening material between our ears and the engine to be both palatable and empowering. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard; a complex rhythm of mechanized ferocity that thrums through your spine. If potential energy has a sound, this is it.
I shift into drive and gingerly apply the throttle. There’s no jolting. There’s no drama. There’s no hint of the beast at our backs. This is not the raucous, untamed supercar experience I’m used to.
Finally clear of the track and traffic, I take a deep breath and mentally prepare myself. I downshift two gears with the steering wheel mounted paddle shifters, automatically engaging Sport mode. The tachometer sprints to the right and I push the accelerator to the floor.
Photo: Bugatti
In milliseconds, a surge of unadulterated energy thrusts us forward with the kind of velocity normally reserved for jumping out of an airplane. It’s like free-fall, but horizontal. And that sound, that glorious noise of sacrificial oxygen being sucked into oblivion blended with an exhaust note that’s more biblical than mechanical, seems to fade away as my focus narrows to a pinpoint on the road ahead. I barely make it through third gear before my survival instincts kick in and I slowly ease onto the brakes. I wasn’t expecting that either; a smooth, squeak-free deceleration from warp speed with all the grace and civility of a Bentley.
This process continues for the next 20 minutes. Accelerate. Cackle wildly. Slow down. Repeat.
But it’s the bits in between the blasts that really surprise me. I was expecting high-speed lunacy. I wasn’t expecting the Veyron to be the pinnacle of civility.
It’s steering is tight, but doesn’t take The Rock’s arms to turn. The dual-clutch transmission automatically shifts gears in smooth, eloquent waves. The interior is a flawless combination of leather and aluminum and hand-stitching.
And if there’s anything that can even begins to justify the Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse’s $2.5 million price tag, it’s this otherworldly balance of brutal speed and unparalleled refinement. It’s simply unmatched on every conceivable level.
When the time came to shut it down and hand the key over to Butch, the contentment of another dream fulfilled began to bleed away and one question percolated to the top of my mind: Where do we possibly go from here?
Photo: Mike Rucco/Wired
