Bugatti Veyron

Published by Dan Freakley | Filed under Petrol

The worlds fastest car. Apparently.

The Bugatti Veyron costs around £800,000 and can go from 0 - 60 faster than a formula one car. This fully road legal beast is sold for less than they actually cost to manufacture and very few cars will be bought, obviously due to the large price tag.

The Veyron houses a W16 Quad-Turbocharged engine that releases 1001 BHP at the touch of a throttle. It can stop from 250 MPH in 10 seconds and has a spoiler that requires a key turn to stop it rising and creating drag.

This beast that can hit 60 MPH in less than 3 seconds and gets to 100 MPH in less than 6.

Quote from BBC Top Gear website:

Bugatti Veyron

It started as an off-the-cuff comment by VW boss Ferdinand Piëch about how great it would be to make a car that could do 400kph and had a 1000 horsepower. The Veyron has managed to achieve the impossible; a car so good even Jeremy couldn’t find fault with it. It’s so good, the Stig cried after driving it.

And that’s what makes the Veyron special, it’s an engineering feat. Apparently VW are losing money on every one they sell. But thank goodness, in this day and age that someone is prepared to create something, not just to make money, but because they want to see if they can.

But its better than that, its not just a way of proving their engineering prowess, it’s a seriously great car and Jeremy has not stopped going on about just how great. The statistics alone make a man weak at the knees. For example, the Veyron has staggeringly good brakes, they can bring the car from 250mph to a complete stop in just ten seconds. It gets even better, at full speed, the Bugatti will empty its 100 litre fuel tank in just 12 minutes. It goes without saying, a 100 litres of petrol costs £100.

The fact is though, very few people will ever own a Veyron. It does, after all, cost the large part of a million quid. But that isn’t the point. The point is that it is to cars what Concorde was for planes. Something that will be recorded in the history books as a feat of human endeavour.

Quote from RS Sports Cars:

Bugatti Veyron 16.4 in Production

After four years of development, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, as it will now be called, is ready for series production. The most exclusive sports car of all time is following in the footsteps of the legendary Bugatti, those universally-coveted limousines and unbeatable racing cars of the 1920s and 1930s which today are among the most sought-after creations from the early days of automobile construction.

This brings to an end the era of design models and concept cars which since the late 1990s have signposted possible paths to the Bugattis of the future. Design and technological concept have finally become reality in the Veyron model’s final form and will be available from the beginning of 2004 as a strictly limited edition of just 300 cars. Technologically futuristic and packed with creative engineering, the first Bugatti of the 21st century has arrived.

Merging the Past and the Future

The Bugatti Veyron 16.4’s home is in Molsheim-Dorlisheim, the French town where, almost 100 years ago, Ettore Bugatti began to realize his lifelong dream of being a car manufacturer.
The new workshop is not just where the engine and vehicle are assembled and tested, it is also the place where customers collect their Bugattis and drive them out onto the streets for the first time.

The aim is to turn Molsheim into an all-round Bugatti centre once again. While up to 70 new vehicles a year are built by hand in the new facility, neighbouring specially-equipped workshops are the scene of expert restoration work on historic Bugatti vehicles. Both past and future have found a new home here.

High Performance

The car’s safety systems have been designed to cope with its extraordinary performance, acceleration and speed. The single-piece carbon fibre monocoque alone scores maximum points in crash tests, while airbags give the driver and passenger additional protection. The high-speed tires designed specially for the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 (for vmax. > 350 km/h), sizes 265-68 R 500 A (front) and 365-71 R 540 A (rear), incorporate a further innovative safety feature in the form of the PAX System fitted to the wheels and tires, ensuring safe handling even after sudden pressure loss. Another Bugatti Veyron 16.4 component with a safety element is the rear spoiler. As well as providing the necessary downforce during high-speed travel, it acts as a kind of ‘parachute brake’ during emergency braking. Once precisely-defined deceleration forces are registered the spoiler tilts and the additional air resistance this generates reduces the braking distance to that of a lorry.

The Art of the Machine

The W16 alloy engine developed by Bugatti for the Veyron 16.4 will have a special and absolutely unique place in the history of sports car construction. Its design employs the space-saving VR principle with two particularly slender eight-cylinder blocks arranged at a 90° angle to each other.

1001 horsepower equip the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 with a level of acceleration unheard of in the sports car segment, propelling it from 0 to 60 mph in just three
seconds and past the 200 mph mark in a mere 14 seconds. Thanks to its 923 lb-ft, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4’s enormous propulsive power is not exhausted until it reaches
252.3 mph (406 km/h): the maximum speed for which chassis and drive train have been designed. Any further performance escalation is limited by current design and construction.

Also unique is the power transmission via an innovative directshift gearbox. Without any interruption in the power flow, the sequential seven-speed gearbox transmits the engine’s power to the wheels via permanent four-wheel drive. Put simply, this means uninterrupted acceleration from a standing start to maximum speed: a feeling previously known only to jet pilots.

Exclusive, Classical, Functional

Both exclusive and highly functional, the interior of the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 will transport you to a world of your own. Superb leather, also two-tone if desired, quality metallic trim and beautifully designed and ergonomically laid-out controls characterize the Veyron cockpit.

The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 instruments, with a large central rev counter surrounded by four smaller additional instruments also conjures up memories of the marque’s legendary motor sport past. The deliberate avoidance of superfluous instruments and modern extras are an unmistakable statement of the car’s uncompromising sportiness.

Unchanged on the series version of the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is the classical two-tone paintwork. The designers have selected five separate colour combinations for the car: Each of the combinations features the bonnet, roof and rear in the darker of the two colours, with the sides and front wheel arches in the lighter colour.

Buggati Factory in Molsheim

On Saturday, 3 September 2005, Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. hosted opening festivities for the ‘Atelier’ in Molsheim, its new plant dedicated to production of the new Bugatti. At the same time, the company’s headquarters, the Château St. Jean, along with the neighboring buildings, were officially opened for their intended purpose.

Technorati Tags: Petrol