Bugatti Veyron: the truth is out there...

Newswheel staff :: 22 September 2005 :: Filed under Bugatti, Bugatti Veyron, Europe & UK, US

[Click on an image to view]

The floodgates have opened

Bugatti didn’t bother with the Frankfurt motorshow, preferring to show off the Veyron 16.4 uber-hyper-super-ultra car at its Molsheim headquarters. And now the VW-owned car maker has begun lifting NDAs on the test drives that many magazines have been sitting on.

For it’s just a trickle, but there’s sure to be a torrent of hyperbole as the road tests and first drives are outted by the world’s motoring media. Car and AutoExpress – a pair of UK-based motoring mags - both have driving impressions of the big beast in their latest issues, but from different ends of the globe. And with tedious predictability, both mags scream “world exclusive” on their covers. No doubt bags of mags will soon be making the same claim and the international motoring magazine stall at your local airport will then be wall-to-wall with world exclusive Bug reports.

The real deal
So, what’s the car really like? Well, Car says it’s nothing less than the “greatest road car in history” and “the automotive equivalent of the moment when the first man walked on the moon.” Er, pretty good then? Car backs these big bombs up with some pretty staggering facts, including the revelation that the car hits 125mph from rest faster than any 2005 F1 car (7.3 seconds – hop over here for full performance numbers). It’s also sobering to discover that the Veyron’s 987bhp power output is just one third of the engine’s raw combustion energy. Apparently, as much as 1,000bhp is boiling off in the cooling system with another 1,000bhp absorbed by the exhaust. For sure, cooling and exhaust systems sap power on all engines, but it’s a sobering set of statistics, nonetheless. Likewise, the idea of grabbing that final gear ratio at 215mph is a real neck prickler. But there’s one problem with Car’s coverage: despite apparently sampling the car first-hand during its final shake down in Germany, there’s virtually no exposition of how the car feels to drive in general, much less a detailed analysis of how the beast handles. This, perhaps, is coverage that has come at a cost…

Truth? You can’t handle the truth!
At least AutoExpress gives the impression they’ve driven the thing, however fleetingly. But from their description, it sounds like Bugatti were restricting hacks to a few straight line acceleration and braking runs and a salt-flat-assisted Vmax attempt (AutoExpress achieved 220mph, the last 34mph being out of reach due to the high altitude of the US test site). Again, there’s much talk of clever adaptable aerodynamics, self-adjusting suspension and gargantuan cooling apparatus. But not much by way of an on-road assessment. That said, AutoExpress are realistic enough to conclude that although spectacular, it’s hardly the best car on the market.

Indeed, the more we see and read about the 254mph Veyron 16.4, the sillier the project seems (and the more impressive McLaren’s achievement with the F1 becomes). Very probably, the car exists to achieve two goals: firstly, to spare the blushes of VW Group supremo Ferdinand Piech, who long ago declared the Veyron would deliver 1,001PS (987bhp in old money). And secondly, to smash the 250mph / 400kph barrier. It’s a numbers game, the Bugatti Veyron, and a pretty childish one at that. Still, one fabulous factoid did emerge from this first round of fanboyish felation: owners driving with a heavy right foot can look forward to fuel consumption as low as 2.8mpg. Maybe it is the greatest car in history, after all.

Linkage:
Car Magazine
AutoExpress Magazine