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2006 Bugatti EB 16.4 Veyron Body style(s): 2-door coupe
Notes
The quickest, most powerful, and most expensive car ever sold in the United States
arrived for 2006 in the form of the Bugatti Veyron. The legendary French marque had
returned with a vengeance, now as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Volkswagen AG. The
Veyron originally arrived as a concept car in the fall of 1999, and was chosen by
Ferdinand Piëch as the vehicle to resurrect the Bugatti marque. In order to make
the car and company stand out alongside other exotics, Piëch arbitrarily specified
1,000 horsepower and 248.5 mph from the new supercar -- figures extreme enough to
capture the production car speed record from the McLaren F1. The Veyron 18/4 concept
was powered by a 6.3-liter W-18 engine (essentially three inline-sixes set at
60-degree angles to each other), but this produced "only" 555 horsepower, and was
incompatible with turbochargers for cooling reasons. Instead, Bugatti selected a
very different W-16 engine, first developed for the 1999 Bentley Hunaudières concept
car, And using two Volkswagen narrow-angle VR-8 engines mounted to a common
crankshaft. This more compact layout allowed the fitting of four turbochargers.
The hypercar now had an engine, but it required enormous cooling, a problem made
all the harder by Piëch's insistence that the concept's styling not be
substantively altered for production. Difficulties in developing a transmission,
carbon-ceramic brake system, and suspension contributed to the delays that
repeatedly delayed the Veyron program, with the delivery date slipping from 2004 to
2006. Unlike the anorexic McLaren F1, the Bugatti Veyron was a rather heavy car at
about 4,500 pounds for a car no larger than a 3,200-pound Ferrari F430. As a result,
the car behaved more like a GT, with surefooted handling, but without the nimble
feel of true sports cars like the Lotus Elise. However, thrust was never in short
supply: Motor Trend got a Veyron to 60 in just 2.7 seconds. Power was
transmitted from the exposed engine through a 7-speed sequential gearbox (shifted
by paddles or by a lever on the center console) to the rear wheels, and through a
Haldex clutchpack to the front. The engine could deliver an estimated 1,020-1,040
horsepower, so Bugatti was able to use its slightly conservative 1,001 horsepower
figure on both sides of the Atlantic (despite differences in DIN and SAE formulas).
To achieve this, the engine required no less than 44 quarts of oil, and 58 quarts
of coolant. The tire system was a Michelin PAX setup, purpose-built to withstand the
Veyron's enormous speeds while retaining roadability (with the largest rear tires
yet fitted to a production model), with the tires integral to the wheel rim. The
Veyron also had an air brake -- the spoiler could tilt up to 70 degrees to provide
additional wind resistance to stop the car, helpful in a car that could cover 371
feet per second at full tilt. To reach its top speed, the Veyron required
the insertion of a second key to hunch down the suspension and ready the car to
handle the extremes of 250 mph travel. The interior was almost entirely leather,
alcantara suede, and aluminum, with a minimum of switchgear (except for an
aircraft-style overhead console). A $30,000 sound system with a single-disc CD player
was discreetly positioned in the dash, and the navigation system (programmed by a
PDA), gave its graphical display in the rearview mirror. The car had precious
little storage space, making it slightly impractical for long trips despite being
billed as an "everyday" supercar. Four seat choices were available at no cost: a
bolstered sport seat in one of three sizes, or a comfort seat with power height
adjustment that offered a softer place to park oneself. The only other choices were
paint, which had to be two-tone (with 53 available colors), and interior leather,
which had 12 choices and was optionally two-tone as well. While a superb engineering
achievement and a car of incredible superlatives, the Veyron was still a frightfully
expensive machine, with a price of 1.1 million euros. Twice as expensive as cars like
the Saleen S7 TwinTurbo, which offered about 90 percent of
the EB 16.4's performance, the Veyron was almost as ludicrously excessive as another
car from The House of Ettore, the Gilded Age-era Bugatti Royale.
design
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