€1 million Bugatti Given the Green Light

By Feann Torr - 8/Nov/2005

Apart from the odd top-fuel drag car driver, there'd be few people in the world who would be able to honestly admit that they have travelled at 250mph in a car.

Using the metric scale, that equates to exactly 402.3 kilometres per hour. That's quick.

But now you have the chance to reach such speeds if you happen to be very rich and very well connected, as after many stalled starts the Bugatti Veyron has started production.

This Veyron is a special car for a number of reasons, but most importantly because it hopes to be the world's fastest production vehicle. And at over 400km/h it's probably got than one in the bag.

But reaching this speed is no easy feat, and reaching it while retaining even a modicum of stability is even more difficult, and over the past six years Bugatti has been fine tuning it's 16-cylinder, 8.0-litre road warrior.

And for about the price of a nice house you can get one for yourself.

Early reports put the price at €1 million, or about $US1.4 million, which is roughly $1.92 million Aussie dollars. Expensive, sure, but the bragging rights would be worth it. Probably.

Using it's full name, the Bugatti 16.4 Veyron is an all-wheel drive supercar powered by an 8.0-litre W16-cylinder engine. The 'W' configuration comes from engineering two 4.0-litre V8s to share the same crankshaft - but more on the Veyron's fire-breathing engine a bit later in the article.

We reported a few years back that the car was supposed to be launched in 2003, but at one of its first public debuts (at the famous Laguna Seca Raceway) in California it showed poor high speed stability, even spinning out of control at one point.

There were also reports of excessive engine bay heat, which isn't entirely surprising when the 64-valve engine makes use of four turbochargers, each of which would generate huge amounts of external heat when under constant boost.

But that's all been allegedly ironed out and the ambitious Veyron project has finally blossomed, expected to generate similar amounts of hype that McLaren's famous F1 supercar garnered in the early '90s. Incidentally, it had a top speed of 243mph, or 391km/h.

Whether the Bugatti receives the same gushing praise that came the McLaren's way from the motoring press in 1993 is, however, another question.

Pulled from our earlier article on the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, here we detail the car's specs and performance: to start with, the long bodied Bugatti measures 4.5 metres long and a massive 2.0 metres wide, and is dotted with many air intakes, such as those located just behind the front wheels, to keep the aforementioned super-heated engine cool.

The twin intake snorkels mounted on the roof also help funnel cool air to the mid-mounted 16-litre engine, and while practical, they add a great deal of visual impact too.

The goal was create the world's fastest production vehicle, yet it had to have manners; something that could be driven on the road smoothly, or right-royally thrashed.

As such, one of the first hurdles the company faced, after developing the killer 16-cylinder engine, was to make sure it was aerodynamically sound.

To be able to reach speeds of more than 400km/h and still provide linear handling characteristics, the Veyron's carbon fibre body had to be sleek and low, but under the car and out of sight are the kind of ground effects more commonly seen on Formula One cars.

Bugatti paid a lot of attention to the front and rear spoilers, and the company reckons that the new Veyron will hold higher corner speeds, be able to more effectively get power to the ground while exiting corners and also decelerate more rapidly under brakes thanks to all the painstaking work they've carried out in the wind tunnel.

The most impressive aspect of the new Bugatti supercar has to be the 16-cylinder engine, which is located behind the driver (mid-mount) for a low centre of gravity, thusly improving turn-in and general handling characteristics. Adaptive suspension will also contribute to the vehicle's cornering performance.

Rather than try and squeeze 16 cylinders into a vee format, Volkswagen came up with a much more compact idea a few years ago - the 'W' configuration. In layman's terms, it's basically two 4.0-litre V8s sharing the same crankshaft, which makes it more compact than a similarly sized V12.

This gargantuan 8.0-litre W16 has 4-valves per cylinder - for a total of 64 valves - and together with a supremely sophisticated forced induction system, it belts out 1001 horsepower, or 736kW @ 6000rpm. Just to put that in perspective, the Veyron generates more power than four of Subaru's potent WRXs put together.

Made of lightweight aluminium and magnesium, the 7993cc 16-cylinder powerplant has four turbochargers and four camshafts, one for each bank of four cylinders respectively.

With a 9.0:1 compression ratio and variable valve timing, the quad-turbo system helps boost the car's low end, while providing a fatter torque curve at the same time: 1250Nm of torque is stabilised from between 2200-5500rpm.

The new Bugatti is fitted with a brand-spanking new 7-speed semi-manual transmission, which is operated by paddle shifters located behind the tanned leather steering wheel. On average, the twin-clutch system takes just 0.2 seconds to change gears, which is quicker (on average) than a traditional manual.

In the real world, this 736kW and 1250Nm combines with the 7-speed, all-wheel drive transmission and an expected 1600kg kerb weight to propel the Bugatti Veyron to 100km/h from rest in 2.9 seconds. The McLaren F1 did it in about 3.2 seconds.

If that isn't enough, the four-wheel drive chunk of exotica will hit 300km/h in 14.0 seconds flat and can travel at 400km/h if pushed (and preferably on the cold day). The car is expected to be electronically limited to around 400km/h (248 mph), though if de-restricted the 8.0-litre super coupe could be capable of even higher speeds, at which point it's aerodynamics would probably fail to keep the car glued to the road.

To safely and reliably accelerate to 400km/h, the Veyron makes use of custom-designed Michelin tyres, which utilises what has been termed the Pax system. The tyres are capable of dealing with the stress of 400km/h speeds, and they also have a special pressure monitoring system and run-flat capability.

The new all-wheel drive Veyron hopes to be the world's fastest production vehicle, and with its massive 8.0-litre, quad turbo engine, carbon fibre-reinforced chassis and aluminium body panels, there are few cars out there today that combine such technical sophistication with a look that's quite unorthodox, yet strangely appealing.