Ekliptix
06-21-2003, 05:00 PM
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The smile of delight and satisfaction on the face of Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piëch said it all at the Geneva motor show in 2001 when he announced that VW would produce the Bugatti EB16.4 Veyron and that it would have 1001 horsepower and 1250 newton-meters of torque. Okay, the numbers are reduced when translated to SAE standards—987 horsepower and 922 pound-feet of torque—but the Veyron is clearly and decisively the king supercar. What it says is Piëch’s (VW’s) is bigger—well, more powerful—than yours. And if it doesn’t prove to be the fastest street-legal car of all time, something will be very wrong. The Veyron should be good for 250 mph. Don’t ask where you could do such a speed. And it isn’t polite to wonder aloud if those with a million bucks to spare are qualified to drive something that can reach 185 mph in 14.0 seconds.
There won’t be many of these cars, perhaps 50 a year, and the final production version, due to be presented this June in Monaco, will look different in detail from the show car depicted here (it’s been around since 2001 and has changed color and trim several times; beneath the curious retro styling is a lash-up that hardly runs). The real Bugatti Veyron prototypes, built by VW engineers in Wolfsburg, have been developed in secrecy. The changes made to the car’s appearance are mostly for aerodynamic improvements.
Otherwise, the specs aren’t much changed from those announced in 2001: an 8.0-liter engine with four turbochargers, four-wheel drive, and a seven-speed sequential and manual gearbox with a dual-clutch system. The chassis, originally expected to be an aluminum space frame, Audi-style, will be a carbon-fiber monocoque.
The engine is the thing about the Bugatti: a W-16—two V-8 cylinder banks set at 90 degrees—with four overhead camshafts, 64 valves, variable valve timing, and direct gasoline injection. VW engine development chief and Bugatti president Karl-Heinz Neumann has personal charge of the project. Ettore Bugatti, who died in 1947, would appreciate that.
This is the second revival of the famous marque of the 1920s and ’30s. Romano Artioli reestablished Bugatti in Italy in 1991 and made 139 of the mid-engined EB110 and EB112 models. Parts from that failed enterprise live on at Edonis in Italy, where former Bugatti engineer Jean-Marc Borel is struggling to produce a small series of e750,000 (about $827,500) cars based on the EB110.
Volkswagen has returned Bugatti to its ancestral home at Molsheim in the Alsace region of France, where it has refurbished Château St.-Jean, Ettore Bugatti’s guest house, and will hand-assemble the Veyron, like a race car, in a shop being constructed alongside. The car is named after Pierre Veyron, the French Bugatti driver who won at Le Mans in 1939 in a Type 57.
VW’s Bugatti says it has “an informal order list” amounting to 100 cars and that the first owner of a Bugatti Veyron will take delivery in April 2004; cars for the U.S. are scheduled sometime later.
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The smile of delight and satisfaction on the face of Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piëch said it all at the Geneva motor show in 2001 when he announced that VW would produce the Bugatti EB16.4 Veyron and that it would have 1001 horsepower and 1250 newton-meters of torque. Okay, the numbers are reduced when translated to SAE standards—987 horsepower and 922 pound-feet of torque—but the Veyron is clearly and decisively the king supercar. What it says is Piëch’s (VW’s) is bigger—well, more powerful—than yours. And if it doesn’t prove to be the fastest street-legal car of all time, something will be very wrong. The Veyron should be good for 250 mph. Don’t ask where you could do such a speed. And it isn’t polite to wonder aloud if those with a million bucks to spare are qualified to drive something that can reach 185 mph in 14.0 seconds.
There won’t be many of these cars, perhaps 50 a year, and the final production version, due to be presented this June in Monaco, will look different in detail from the show car depicted here (it’s been around since 2001 and has changed color and trim several times; beneath the curious retro styling is a lash-up that hardly runs). The real Bugatti Veyron prototypes, built by VW engineers in Wolfsburg, have been developed in secrecy. The changes made to the car’s appearance are mostly for aerodynamic improvements.
Otherwise, the specs aren’t much changed from those announced in 2001: an 8.0-liter engine with four turbochargers, four-wheel drive, and a seven-speed sequential and manual gearbox with a dual-clutch system. The chassis, originally expected to be an aluminum space frame, Audi-style, will be a carbon-fiber monocoque.
The engine is the thing about the Bugatti: a W-16—two V-8 cylinder banks set at 90 degrees—with four overhead camshafts, 64 valves, variable valve timing, and direct gasoline injection. VW engine development chief and Bugatti president Karl-Heinz Neumann has personal charge of the project. Ettore Bugatti, who died in 1947, would appreciate that.
This is the second revival of the famous marque of the 1920s and ’30s. Romano Artioli reestablished Bugatti in Italy in 1991 and made 139 of the mid-engined EB110 and EB112 models. Parts from that failed enterprise live on at Edonis in Italy, where former Bugatti engineer Jean-Marc Borel is struggling to produce a small series of e750,000 (about $827,500) cars based on the EB110.
Volkswagen has returned Bugatti to its ancestral home at Molsheim in the Alsace region of France, where it has refurbished Château St.-Jean, Ettore Bugatti’s guest house, and will hand-assemble the Veyron, like a race car, in a shop being constructed alongside. The car is named after Pierre Veyron, the French Bugatti driver who won at Le Mans in 1939 in a Type 57.
VW’s Bugatti says it has “an informal order list” amounting to 100 cars and that the first owner of a Bugatti Veyron will take delivery in April 2004; cars for the U.S. are scheduled sometime later.
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