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Bugatti's Latest Veyron, Most Ridiculous Car on the Planet?
Wired has an amusing writeup that accurately captures the most recent ridiculous addition to Bugatti's automobile catalog. The $2.1 million Veyron sports over 1,000 horsepower, a 16-cylinder engine, and a top speed of 245 mph. The guilty conscience comes for free. "That same cash-filled briefcase could buy seven Ferrari 599s or every single 2009 model Mercedes. You could snap up a top-shelf Maybach and employ a chauffeur until well past the apocalypse. Hell, in this economy, $2.1 million is probably enough to make you a one-man special-interest group with some serious Washington clout."
If you parked it on the street without an armed guard, you'd deserve it.
Friend of mine has a Ferrari.. it goes from the garage to the track and back again, and that's it. (Oh ok, sometimes it goes down the highway and gets him speeding tickets.)
How we know is more important than what we know.
What's the "guilty conscience" wisecrack for? This thing is not only incredibly cool, but if you can afford it, you already pay enough taxes to support a small mid-American city. Get over it.
Why? The Veyron is an incredible piece of engineering. Bugatti sell them at a LOSS if I recall. The workmanship is astounding.
I ever caught you keying ANY car, I'd break your fucking legs. People who key cars are UNIVERSALLY assholes.
But then you're too big of a pussy to post with your real account, so clearly you ARE an asshole.
First off, they don't go zero to sixty in 2.5 seconds. Those forces cause huge stresses on the cars frame. Secondly, you can't go using whatever materials you want. Weight is an important factor when dealing with cars. "Normal aluminum" is light, but not nearly light enough. And keep in mind, the impressive part was designing a topless vehicle that can withstand the stresses involved with traveling at 217mph.
People are usually only jealous of people who have more then they do..
They are rarely jealous of someone who has less.
My guess is that ScuttleMonkey belongs to the former, and his rant is nothing more than sour grapes. I'll just admit that I could never afford to even own one, let alone buy one and move on.
But I sure would love to take a look at one....or a ride.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Oh yeah, sure, it's very easy for amateurs to make cars go 400mph. I see it all the time with funny cars/etc.
Of course, they only go that fast for a couple brief seconds. Then, after about 2 runs down the track, they have to completely rebuild the engines. And the tires have to be replaced after each race. And the engines can't pass smog tests. And the cars aren't street legal.
Everyone knows lots of things that go this fast. What makes this car amazing is that it goes this fast and it's a god damn daily driver. If you can afford it.
The thing breathes more air in a minute than I do in a week at top speed. If you know how a petrol engine works and that doesn't give you a hardon, please cut your man card up.
The game.
Oh fuck you. There are plenty of self-conscious assholes who think of no one but themselves and park like that too, and those dick wads deserve getting their car keyed. What's the matter, are you one of those dicks who got his car keyed for that very reason?
I can testify to that. My car is right around 4 seconds 0-60. I can jump ahead of just about anyone up through about 120mph. Pushing through 140, it's pushing. I've only accelerated just through 150, but ran out of road. A lot of the high speed numbers are worthless, because they'll never be reached.
They say in the article, "...you can outrun not only the 5-0's cruisers, but their helicopters, too. If they wanna catch you, they're gonna have to dust off Airwolf...", but that's sensationalized journalism. Like I said, I've been up through 150mph, or 220 feet per second. Driving along at a mile every 24 seconds has it's drawbacks, like a 5 mile stretch takes 118 seconds to cross. What was a nice long straight stretch of road suddenly becomes very very short. What should take 5 minutes to drive at the speed limit is gone less than 2 minutes. God forbid that you're driving on land, where animals may wander across the road, or a car may come out of a side street. It's not like you're going to swerve without some serious side effects.
I ran across a neat video on YouTube where a motorcycle driver was running from the police. Sure, they couldn't keep up, because he'd zip away in no time. Max air speed for an good unladen police helicopter (no extra equipment, seats, and minimal fuel) is 150mph. If they're carrying their normal equipment and enough fuel to follow with, that drops. He was doing over 150mph, and the helicopter kept up pretty nicely. Why? Because despite the fact that he was able to pull away from the helicopter at points, the helicopter didn't have to follow the road, encounter traffic, nor slow down for intersections. He was driving fast, he wasn't suicidal. A bend in the road creates a shorter intercept route for the helicopter to follow.
If they're really after you, it doesn't matter how fast you're going. They may radio ahead and say to set up a roadblock, which sometimes can be avoided, but it's hard to avoid a shoulder to shoulder nail strip. 4 flat tires will keep you from getting away, no matter how fast your car was. That nail strip can mean a fatality when you hit it, if you're going way too fast.
Do I speed as a daily thing? Nope. I cruise right about the speed limit, depending on conditions. My high speeds have been on tracks, where they belong. I know my car is really fast, so I don't have to prove it to anyone. Even if it's a kid with a Honda Civic and a coffee can for a muffler. :) I'm at the "why bother" phase of my life. Do I need to burn up extra fuel just to prove that I can go faster than him? Not really. It's not worth wasting my fuel, and potentially getting a ticket (or worse).
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It's a lopsided equation where the design cost is very high and the production number is very low. If you take them exactly at their word then yes they will never, ever make money on it. I highly doubt that the statement of "every Veyron is sold at a loss" comes with zero marketing spin. My point being that most of the built in cost of the car is the R&D. If you plan to sell 50 of them (@ $2 mil each) and it cost 200 million to design then yes it's being sold at a loss. You don't even make back what you spent on R&D, let along parts and labor. If you sell 100 at the same price you're selling them at cost - minus materials and labor. If materials and labor are anywhere near 3/4 million then somewhere around the 150 vehicle mark is the break even point. In reality I would wager they probably are losing no more than 40-60K per car, or VW would have canned the project long ago. 30-40K per car is an easy write-off for productive R&D that can be applied to the various brands VW owns (VW, Porsche, etc)
moox. for a new generation.
The days are certainly gone when Wired used to have people like Neal Stephenson write for them.
Wired used to be cool and had decent writers. Wired used to be something to /read/.
Now? We have this. A fluff advertisement column, but not only that, nothing about the tech end at all. Nothing about the engineering or anything really interesting except that it's a fast car and costs a lot of money. It's also written in the style of a high-school newspaper or Slashdot summary. Wired has become Maxim, but without the girls.
--
BMO
How does the possession of money equate to deserving a keyed car?
Idea for you: get off Slashdot, finish your high school diploma, and get a job. You can buy nice things with the money you earn. Maybe you'll lose the desire to destroy other people's things too :)
Speaking from a "flaunt your wealth in the face the starving and you'll get a dagger" class warfare perspective of course.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Well the same holds true of lower end vehicles so I wouldn't be surprised. I remember an article (I think MOTOR or DRIVER magazine) between a Porsche GT2 and litre superbike, with the result of the $18k bike being very even with the $200k Porsche. Of course, your life expectancy on the bike is slightly lower... another similar article here.
:)
Then again they have different target markets. The guy on the bike got to demonstrate his incredible ballsiness, whereas the guy in the Porsche put some tunes on the stereo, flipped on the aircon and went to pick up his girlfriend.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
As a younger man I used to get very upset about the gap between rich and poor, pointing to this type of excess as an example. But having accepted it as an adult, the world is not fair, I actually enjoy seeing this kind of insanity. If the rich want to blow their money on what amounts to "fluff" then so be it. We should be encouraging them every chance we can. It's when they horde it away that truly screws the poor. There's a sucker born every minute, at least with the Bugatti you get a truly well crafted machine that will be rare for the rest of your life and on and on. This machine will also appreciate in value, because like I said, there's one born every minute. If you want to piss your hard earned (or not) money, then who am I to stop you. Play on player. But bear in mind, it's still just a car. One awesome fucking car.
The ones they've had on Top Gear were the hard-top - this is the new convertible, not that you'd know it from the summary. Despite the massive engineering difficulties of slicing the roof off and having it stay rigid and roll-safe, they've managed to keep it as quick as the hard-top. Seriously impressive engineering, even if as a car it's completely insane.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
While I believe this story about the motorcycle is true, you saw this on YouTube BECAUSE a helicopter was close by. There's plenty of guys who never make the news because they just gunned it and got away.
A lot of cops will openly acknowledge that if a sportbike blows past them, pursuit can be futile without air support. This jives with my experience because in my youth and stupidity, I blew past manned speed traps and most of the time, it seems the cops never bothered. The one time I did see lights and pulled over, I was sorely tempted to just gun it and go. I'm utterly confident that there's no way I would have been caught if I didn't have to pretend to be a somewhat law abiding citizen.
It wouldn't surprise me if Bugatti make a big move into a (obviously lower) luxury market very soon, cashing in on the recognition they've earned.
The Bugatti brand has historically been known for exclusive and mostly very high performance automobiles in relatively the same market as other boutique Italian manufacturers such as Ferrari and Lamborghini or the British Aston Martin. The halo effect is well known in mass market brands, but Bugatti and other boutiques like it are NOT mass market brands and cannot be made into mass market brands without losing their boutique pedigree and exclusivity. I would be surprised if Volkswagen attempted to mass market the Bugatti name by producing luxury cars which compete for an entirely different market than supercars. The Mercedes "S-Class" buyer or perhaps the Rolls Royce or Bentley in the really high end is not looking for a supercar, but rather a smooth ride with the most luxurious features and the highest possible quality construction. They generally want a large sedan-like car, not a formula-one racer with leather seats.
even if the cops bought a Veyron, they'd be eating your dust ...
:-) It would probably take a whole tankful of petrol to get up to 420 km/h. They could probably catch you by getting out of their cars and walking a few hundred yards.
Probably not for long.
No cup holder? I'll pass.
They likely looked at the kind of engineering problems a cup holder would present and decided it was too hard.
Think about it: 0-60 in 2.5 seconds == 10.72m/s^2. This car accelerates at _over 1G_. The cup holder would have to automatically swivel through 45 degrees to prevent it spilling your drink when you put your foot to the floor.
hmm, you must be a have-not. I'm sure you can afford to own a notebook, right? In that case, by your childish have-not logic, you deserve to be butt-hole dry-fucked by a night prowler, then have your notebook stolen.
You deserve it at the very least.
Why is it that people with the wherewithal who simply live their lives are branded as cunts who deserve to be robbed, killed, sneered at and have there decent piece of engineering keyed by pimply-faced have-nots?
I suggest to you, Anonymous Coward, that you are indeed an anonymous coward ashamed of your own simmering mediocrity. You are, furthermore, a fucking communist who bites the very hand that feeds it. Go join Osama bin fucking Laden and his bearded closet gays who enjoy destroying instead of building. You don't deserve to be part of a civilised society which aspires to build, improve, learn, live a productive and long life raising beautiful children and leave a legacy.
I'd like to thank you for reminding me that the world is full of little shits like you who do not deserve to be gainfully employed (I filter out your kind all the time when employing - your thin veneer of civility does not hide the pus in your soul). I enjoy superior engineering, the same way you enjoy your decently engineered notebook. Linus drives an old German merc (remember, these things are all relative) who, by your reasoning, has the money for it, and therefore deserves to have his beautiful piece of human engineering keyed, because hey, you can't afford one.
And please, don't blather about how you cannot compare an old merc to a Bugatti. If you do, then I'm sure you won't even hear the whoosh.
Whoop-de-do. At the speeds the Veyron is happy at, a single pebble on a turn would send a motorcycle flying and its owner into the organ donor parts bin. People talk about motorcycle top speed, but they can only reach it safely if the road is perfectly straight and it has absolutely zero debris on it. Otherwise, its just a cooler way than a firearm for heading to the next life.
As a wise police officer once told me: "You can't outrun radio waves, son"
If you can afford the car, the ticket price on the tires isn't even going to make you wince.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
Money is owned by the organisation which produces it. It is distributed with complex rules defining who can receive it and in what circumstances. Those rules are designed by people who already have money to ensure that the system favours them over those who do not already have it. Without money your access to the essentials of life will be severely limited.
Ability, hard work, and chance are all factors in the creation of personal wealth, but let's not forget the skewed set of rules which make it harder for the poor to accumulate money compared with the relative ease with which the already rich accumulate it.
As Top Gear pointed out, yes it is insanely expensive, insanely fast and insanely high tech. However, with oil prices and availability going the way it is, plus increased green awareness, the Veyron probably represents the pinnacle that petrol based cars will ever achieve. This is it.
They are also all sold at a considerable loss - they cost much more to build than they sell for. It's a final swansong excercise in ultimate car technology. Sure, they'll be cool and funky stuff along later but for this sort of vehicle, it's the top dog. As such, I admire it as an excercise is engineering and beauty.
However, it is also (to my mind) an obscene way to spend your money.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
You don't buy a $2.1m car that can go 245MPH to actually go 245MPH. You buy it to brag that you can buy a $2.1m car that can go 245MPH.
Save your energy. Most Slashdot posters are not "car" people and simply don't get it. No amount of argument will penetrate their opinions.
Self awareness - try it!
You're not allowed to jam them, but you're under no obligation to return them.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This is what I don't understand...why have such a fast car at all? It sounds like you pay handsomely for the privilege of driving it--I mean really driving it--what, once a month? Couple times a year? If you're not gonna teach coffee can muffler kid a lesson, is it really worth it?
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.