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Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport

Grand Designs

August 27th 2009, by Nick Hall

Porto Cervo in Sardinia is ludicrously, scary expensive. The world’s most expensive footballer Cristiano Ronaldo dropped in to sun his extortionate legs the week before our arrival and Rod Stewart was packing his manbag as we rolled up to the Hotel Pitrizza for a taste of the jetset lifestyle.

But even in a land this myopically rich, where superyachts clutter the harbour like discarded burger wrappers outside the Billionaire’s Beach Club, the sight and sound of the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport cruising down the harbour is enough to break the air of studied disinterest and send pampered Italians into a cartoonish parody of sheer ecstasy. Kids chase us along the waterfront with expensive camera phones and the gold-plated local women suddenly seem interested.

This is the targa-top Veyron, the ultimate incarnation of the car that changed the world. When VW revived the brand in 2000 Ferdinand Piech promised the fastest, most powerful and most spectacular car the world had ever seen. He delivered in style, the Veyron is a landmark of engineering and in a world gripped by environmental and financial angst, it could well be the last great petrol-engined hypercar. This could be as good as it ever gets.

The Veyron may have been with us since 2005 and trailered for years before that, but the incomparable shape retains its sledgehammer impact. The bluff bull shark of a nose, slab sides and broad rear are the antithesis of fussier Ferraris and it isn’t pretty, but it is a cohesive vision of pure power. And now this monster comes in an al fresco version, and that detail comes at a cost. $2.2 million, to be precise, and no car can be worth that, can it?


That was the standard prejudice, but then my co-driver for the day Olivier Thevenin gives the go-ahead on a deserted stretch of Sardinian backroad and I plant the throttle with the finesse of a drunken elephant. In most big power cars this would have ended badly…

Under the surface the four-wheel-drive system and Haldex differential fights with 922lb/ft of torque and the end result should be a tyre-screeching mess. But the Veyron doesn’t convey the sheer physical trauma at the wheels, it simply takes off like a bullet from a sniper’s rifle as the infinitely cool power meter swings round like a circus hammer to 1001PS and the world outside the window fades to multicoloured streaks.

The engine, just a whistling collection of electrical pumps, whines and whinnies at low speed suddenly finds its eight litre, W16 lungs and roars like some woken giant directly next to my head. 100kph falls in 2.7s and 200kph in 7.3s. Every flick up the seamless seven-speed DSG paddle shift box sucks a fresh gulp of air into those perfectly sculpted airboxes above my head, there’s a deep mechanical sneeze but no let-up in the forward thrust. Suddenly the al fresco option is the only way to go.

Of course you don’t just chop the roof off a 407kph car, that would be a recipe for aerodynamic catastrophe. The bodywork has been modified to manage the airflow, there are new A-pillars, door sills and a larger central tunnel, as well as aerospace-grade beams in the doors that are themselves made of carbon-fibre now. It’s a hell of a lot of work for so few cars and undoubtedly plunged the Veyron project further into the red, but for the 150 souls lucky enough to get one, it will be worth it.

Because the mechanical roar of the Veyron is replaced with a tapestry of noises, the sound of the fuel injectors, the four turbos joining the fray and even the music of these perfectly engineered pistons at work. Every fibre of this grand construction that the cynics decried as an act of madness, every moment of the five years of agony that went in to creating what could just be the epoch car – the best of any of our lifetimes – comes to the fore. This is not a simple exhaust note, this is the symphony of Bugatti’s quad turbocharged masterpiece.

It screams forward at stupid pace until, well beyond 200kph and at a point when this is highly inadvisable, I stamp on the middle pedal as instructed and send the eight-piston caliper backed pads slamming into 400mm carbon ceramic brake discs. It just stops. With just two almost transparent lock-ups the Veyron slows to an eye-popping, stomach rupturing halt in a perfect straight line. Demonstrating the full effect earlier Thevenin even took his hands off the wheel. I don’t.

And right there, in the face of transcendental engineering, the asking price seemed almost cheap. This is a car, just, but it’s so much more as well. It is a defining moment in engineering, a landmark happening and while I am searching for the eloquent terms to describe what has just happened, I resist the temptation to clap my hands and giggle like a child.


The car is serene, flat and the only way to know the sheer stupidity of what’s going on is the skin tightening on the neck and the stomach impacting on the seat. Then, as soon as the sheer insanity starts to kick in, the horizon has arrived and it’s time to jump on the 400mm front ceramic brakes that haul 4387lb of carbon-fibre, aluminium and other exotic materials down to a dead stop in a perfect straight line.

In the corners, too, the Veyron is without parallel and the weight just evaporates as the car cuts through bends at a speed that would leave a Ferrari sliding sideways on full opposite lock. That’s partially thanks to 14” wide rear Michelin Pilot Sport Pax tyres, developed especially for the Veyron, and the most four-wheel-drive system that is way more advanced than the gimp behind the wheel.

An overtake is just a twist of the wheel away and the Veyron flies past whole queues of traffic with barely a time for a regal wave. It just decimates straights, there’s hardly time to register them and while there are cars that claim to be faster at the top end there are none that can get there like this in the hands of anyone that can hold a wheel.

With the polycarbonate roof on it will match the ‘standard’ Veyron’s 253mph, too, although it’s limited to 217mph with the roof off, which would still test the toughest toupee this world has to offer. Incidentally there’s no place to store that plastic roof, or anything else for that matter, and Bugatti’s answer to a rainstorm is a bizarre umbrella-like contraption that limits the car to 100kph.

And driving it comes in a staccato rhythm, with constant lifts. That’s because the weakest part of the car, the part holding the steering wheel, needs time to assess what lies ahead. This is the beauty and the frustration of the Veyron, it’s faster than the human brain and there’s no way to fully exploit it on the public road. That’s fortunate, in a sense, as it drinks 115l/100km at full speed and 35l/100km was a regular occurrence on our run, so one short drive in the car confirmed that Bugati’s estimate of $60,000 annual running costs is not an exaggeration.  

So it’s as fast as anyone could ever want, but it’s so much more, too. Many Veyrons have high mileage because for those that can afford the fuel bill it is a go anywhere supercar with a bulletproof clutch, or two, thanks to the DSG, none of the embarrassing supercar lurches through town.

It’s the complete car, at 2mph or 200, and on that road into Porto Cervo harbour it felt worth every bit of that $2.2 million asking price. But on that background, with the throttle mashed to the floor, this landmark of engineering, this historic machine, was absolutely priceless.


2009 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport
Base price: $2.2 million
Type of vehicle: AWD targa-top sportscar
Engine: 8L, 64-valve W16
Power/Torque: 987bhp/922lb-ft
Transmission: Seven-speed DSG
0-100kph: 2.7s
Top speed: 407kph
Fuel economy: 24.9l/100km

Competition: F1 car, Sunseeker yacht, Gulfstream>