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."

Comments

Re:If I ever see..

[QuantumG]

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.)

Guilty conscience?

[andytrevino]

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.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[andytrevino]

Still, the sales tax alone on it is $155,500 at 5.5% which I'd pay if I bought this thing here in Wisconsin*, unless you're somehow going to smuggle it into the country to not pay sales tax, which would prevent you from properly registering it.. what good is a $2,100,000 car if you can't drive it anywhere?

* Hah -- like a Bugatti dealer would ever set up shop in Wisconsin. :)

I'm awfully tired of this jealous-of-people-with-money attitude. They probably earned it. More than likely they contribute vast sums to charitable causes so they don't have to pay taxes on those sums come death or tax day. If you want the cool stuff they get to have and experiences they get to have, earn it; don't get your jollies off telling THEM what to do with it.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[andytrevino]

No, there is not anything wrong with spending 2 million dollars on a car. It's YOUR money, so if you can afford to and choose to spend 166 years of minimum wage earnings on it, be my guest. Jealousy will get you nowhere closer to owning one of your own -- or, if you're like me, you can just ogle the Bugatti while you drive off in your '05 Ford Escape which gets acceptable gas mileage, handles great in the snow, and did not add $155,000 to the government balance sheets to support welfare recipients, public schools, the police and so on.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[shutdown -p now]

There are many things wrong with spending 2 million dollars on a car, whether fairly earned or not (considering the target audience, the latter is far more likely, but - innocent until proven guilty).

However, the core tenet of our society is the protection of property. Your money, your call. I will call it stupid if it is (buying such a car definitely qualifies), but the freedom to spend/waste money you own is sacrosanct.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[onescomplement]

Actually, rich people are the lousiest charitable givers. Those below the poverty line in the US give a much higher percentage of their earnings to social good. I've been on several boards for charitable organizations and trying to pry money out of rich people directly is impossible. If they have a trust set up, you have a much better chance. I'd sit in the office of one of my causes and folks would walk in off the street and give us crumpled up $5 and $10 bills because the organization helped a friend or relative out.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[timeOday]

I'm awfully tired of this jealous-of-people-with-money attitude. They probably earned it.

They probably didn't. First, most people have at least one significant other who shares their riches. This fact alone means about 50% of the people with super spending power did not earn it. And that doesn't even include their heirs.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[tsa]

You can say that to everyone who owns a car.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

The irony of course is the Veyron is probably better emissions wise than any 15 year old piece of shit the whining hippies drive.

So is EVERY new car on the road. Lower (smog-forming) emissions are one of the great success stories of the ecological movement. And it would never have happened if California hadn't been pressured to impose tougher standards. You can thank the "whining hippies" for that.

And you'd certainly do more damage ecologically in a Prius. (Whose toxic manufacturing processes make it an ecological disaster.)

All manufacturing produces waste, much of it toxic. Where do you think the rubber, plastics, and metal that your vehicle are made out of came from?

Unless you have specific claims about how the Prius produces additional waste compared to a similar new vehicle, I can't really refute them. Which is exactly what you want. By calling the Prius "toxic", you cast doubt without making any real assertions. That's exactly the kind of cheap tactics I'd expect from someone trashing "whining hippies".

Just bugs me to see such smug arrogance from people on here when I would have expected them to marvel at the engineering.

We're not arrogant. We're angry. Angry that such engineering talent went into solving a problem that didn't need to be solved instead of the very real problems that do need to be solved. Show me a car that's lighter and stronger than today's cars yet still cheap to manufacture. That's the kind of "impossible" problem that needs to be solved. Not how to engineer a convertible supercar.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[timeOday]

We are not talking about "professional homes," but rather the super rich. Somebody with 5 million dollars is rich. You might get that rich being, say, a renowned neurosurgeon. 5 million is a lot, enough to afford a nice $200K Ferrari, but a $2M Veyron? No. So we are talking about people with hundreds of millions of dollars here. Even if they marry some hard-working professional worth $5M, it would increase the poorer spouse's spending power by about a factor of 100 - i.e. a negligible fraction of their newfound spending power was earned. So, when you talk about people buying a $2M car, you are talking about perhaps 10,000 eligible buyers worldwide (there are about 1000 billionaires worldwide), most of them later in life (look at the Forbes top 10). You want us to believe a significant percentage of those people are marrying each other?

And again, this is without considering heirs at all. The two richest women in America, for instance, are Wal Mart heirs who had nothing to do with the business.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[Opportunist]

The recent financial problems, caused mainly by people belonging to the group you just descibed, tell me that ... let's say it conservatively, not all really "earned" it.

'til recently, high wages were justified with the insane responsibility managers have. Now we know, they have less responsibility to bear than the average plumber.

Re:If I ever see..

[Goldberg's Pants]

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.

Re:Top Gear Veyron goodness

[JWSmythe]

    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).

   

Article Quality and Wired

[bmo]

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

Re:Yeah but.... 1/4 the price alternative

[fractoid]

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. :)

Play on player

[e2d2]

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.

Re:Top Gear Veyron goodness

[arkhan_jg]

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.

Re:If I ever see..

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

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.

Re:Yeah but.... 1/4 the price alternative

[Tamran]

As a wise police officer once told me: "You can't outrun radio waves, son"

Missing the Pont

[clickclickdrone]

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.

Re:Top Gear Veyron goodness

[cdrudge]

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.

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.

Re:Yeah but.... 1/4 the price alternative

[hb253]

Save your energy. Most Slashdot posters are not "car" people and simply don't get it. No amount of argument will penetrate their opinions.

Re:Yeah but.... 1/4 the price alternative

[zippthorne]

You're not allowed to jam them, but you're under no obligation to return them.