Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport.
MY mission today is to offer my clear-eyed take on the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport. But the price keeps getting in the way.
Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport
This removable-roof version of the Veyron coupe costs 1.4 million euros, or roughly $2.1 million. I say roughly, because the Bugatti’s price can fluctuate about $14,000 a day simply from one-cent adjustments in exchange rates.
For that price, a rare species of car owner gets a rocket that gleams across the planet’s surface faster than any true production automobile that has come before. The Bugatti shifts occupants around like a Star Trek transporter: from a standstill to 60 miles per hour in 2.7 seconds, to 125 m.p.h. in just over 7 seconds and on to a top speed of 253 m.p.h. — though 401 kilometers per hour has a better bullet-train ring to it.
Particulars include 1,001 horsepower, 16 cylinders, 8 liters of engine displacement, 4 turbochargers, all-wheel drive and a dual-clutch automatic transmission. Only 150 Grand Sports will be built, tacked onto 300 editions of the Veyron coupe, making the Bugatti the automotive equivalent of a Fabergé egg. A $450,000 deposit gets that egg rolling at Bugatti’s atelier in Molsheim, France.
As a fast-car fanboy, this is where I should need a squeegee to wipe the drool off the page. But while the Saudi sheiks who’ll buy the Grand Sport want my advice as much as they want electric cars, the Bugatti ultimately doesn’t do it for me.
Though I generally test cars for a week, I was granted barely an hour’s audience with the Bugatti. But as with my previous test of the coupe, my impression was of a car so overqualified for public roads that even the ultra-rich would be better off with a more approachable sports car.
Bugatti’s main achievement was making a car that weighs nearly 4,400 pounds — 1,100 more than a Corvette or Porsche 911 — accelerate and handle so well. The second achievement, and no small feat, is how a midengine exotic with more power than a Formula One racer manages to feel comfortable and pliable even in city traffic. With just a little instruction, your grandmother could drive this car at 150 m.p.h. while knitting a Nomex racing suit.
Press the gas pedal, thwack the paddle shifters and the next thing you know the aero wing emerges from the rear deck — a sign that you’ve already crested 137 m.p.h.
