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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."
I bet you could rack mount a couple servers in the trunk (1U). Fastest datacenter on Earth.
Top Gear had an episode some time ago where they opened this beast up on the 5 mile+ straight at Volkswagen's German test facility. So damned fast - 407 kph!
From the episode: "At this speed, the tires will disintegrate in 15 minutes - That's ok, we've only got enough fuel for 12"
you never lose in ure razorblade shoes......Beck-Hotwax
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.
Sorry, but if I had one, my guilty conscience would have been left behind on the road, choking on the dust from my Veyron.
GM owns Volkswagen? That is news to me.
-- Cheers!
More importantly, at 2.1 million dollars, will it blend?
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
Bugatti Automobiles SAS is a subsidiary of Volkswagen, and is actually a new company founded in 2000. As far as I'm aware, none of the former Bugatti companies were ever associated with GM; even if they were, a subsidiary can certainly make cars distinct from its parent company if the corporate structure permits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_vehicle
The whole point of a halo car is to demonstrate engineering prowess and/or get PR for the company. It certainly worked; Bugatti went from being a maliase-y brand nobody had heard of, to a brand almost any 18 year old kid and any car enthusiast worth his salt knows about. 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.
Please help metamoderate.
At the beginning of 2008 Pininfarina and Bolloré set up a 50-50 joint venture with the goal of designing, developing, manufacturing and distributing an electric car with revolutionary technical features and formal qualities. The company considers the BLUECAR, to be not a mere concept car but a forerunner of the vehicle which will go into production in Italy at Pininfarina starting from 2010. Production on a commercial scale will take place between 2011 and 2017, with the forecasted output by 2015 being about 60,000 units.
Link to Story.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
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.
Working in Singapore a year ago I noticed that there were a lot of Lamborghinis around. Its a bit silly because their highest speed limit is 80km/h and the island isn't big enough to get the thing to top speed anyway.
Apparently the thing to do is wake up at 4 AM, cross the causeway into Malaysia and point the car at Kuala Lumpur. Two hours later you are having breakfast in KL. The drive back would be after the traffic cops have woken up for the day so you take a bit longer for that leg, and carry some cash
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
"TFA waffles on about how Bugatti had to work on the structure to make it survive at 250 miles per hour, but honestly, speeds like that are just routine for twin engined aeroplanes."
Not on tarmac they aren't. You're neglecting the fact that the only thing keeping the Veyron on the road are four bits of rubber. Let's see the plane this is supposedly routine for do 250mph along the ground for any length of time. What an utterly ridiculous statement. You may as well say "The Space Shuttle does more than that easily!" It'd be as equally stupid and irrelevant.
Do 500mph in a plane, then do 100mph in a car. Which was the rougher ride? Stressed "a bit more"? Are you insane?
As a racer I'm just honestly astounded you'd make such a wrong headed comparison. I am just overwhelmed here with all the reasons you are so incredibly misguided.
As for your second equally demented paragraph, the Veyron is ROAD LEGAL! None of the cars you're talking about are.
Good god it's amazing you can dress yourself. Do you accidentally find yourself trying to wear bananas on your feet? Or perhaps a melon instead of a tie? Because honestly, your comparisons make me wonder what else you get so easily confused by. If you think the Veyron is comparable to a plane then...
I'm sorry, I'm just utterly baffled by you. But then if you read this you're probably going to try and type your reply on a bowl of soup. After all it's similar to a keyboard.
It comes with Windows Mobile on the navigation system.
Yeah, like they gonna sell millions of these. Keep your commie green cool aid to yourself, eh, monkey boy?!
"Commie" is a bit inappropriate, considering the immense environmental damage caused by communist regimes. It kinda figures, considering that they were all about "progress", technology and industrial "victory". The Nazis, OTOH, were relatively "green", at least in theory. Hitler was even a vegetarian (sort of). Cue Godwin!
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.
A mid-life Crysis? Damn, all I had was a mid-life Grand Theft Auto.
You just got troll'd!
Kinda puts it in perspective..............
Airplanes go pretty fast on asphalt actually. A typical commerical airliner takes off at about 200 mph and lands at 150-175. The Concorde took off at 250 mph. The shuttle is well over 200 at touchdown.
TODO: Something witty here...
Hell, in this economy, $2.1 million is probably enough to make you a one-man special-interest group with some serious Washington clout."
It's a car well suited to bankers who profited from the financial scandals and government bailouts.
Why? The Veyron is an incredible piece of engineering. Bugatti sell them at a LOSS if I recall. The workmanship is astounding.
Not only that, but according to the Wired article,
they had to sacrifice 100 virgins and have the production facility in Molsheim, France, blessed by druids.
I completely disagree with sacrificing virgins, so anybody who buys this car is implicitly supporting the destruction of virgins.
What advantages does this motor car have over, say, a train -- which I could also afford?
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.
brand nobody had heard of
Are you kidding? Bugatti has been around forever.
Nowadays Bugatti is owned by Volkswagen and the Veyron is it's "gimmick" (for the car illiterate, this is an understatement) to show the world how bloody good they are. The "Volk" (people) part of VW is prohibitive in marketing luxury cars. The Phaeton for example just doesn't get the attention it deserves in the limousine segment.
IMHO the pedigree isn't there anymore. Bugatti was very successful in the old days but ever since Ettore Bugatti passed away in 1947 the company just didn't have a sense of direction. In 1987 the name Bugatti -and not the expertise and craftsmanship- was bought by an entrepreneur which produced the horrible Bugatti EB110. Now VW produces the Veyron and it's currently the technically most sophisticated car around but the blood line is definitively cut.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
1000 horsepower is a lot of power.
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
$550,000, same 0-60 acceleration, MUCH higher top speed (420 mph/ 676 km/h). So what if it isn't completely street-legal ... even if the cops bought a Veyron, they'd be eating your dust ...
does it run linux?
I don't know about the Veyron, but the Tesla Roadster does. I have one of the logs right here. 2.6.11.8-1.3.0, BusyBox 1.00, 32 megs ram, Philips-LPC2294 CPU, etc.
All them years of priest training, taken out by one bounty hunter.
Hate to tell ya, but you've got a flat 6, not a V6, sitting behind you...
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.
Real geeks put diamond dust on the wipers =D
There are two sets of costs: non-recurring and recurring. The non-recurring costs include all of the engineering effort, R&D, putting together the production facility, etc. The recurring costs are those that you incur for each unit produced.
I find it highly unlikely that the recurring costs are more than $2.1M for the car, unless it was made of solid iridium or something. (Annual production of iridium is something like 3 tons.) I wouldn't find it surprising at all, though, if Bugatti had sunk quite a bit of R&D money into developing the tech in the Veyron, and perhaps a bit of dough on the production facility.
Wikicars says this:
So far, the oldest article I've seen claiming these numbers is this one from early 2007. By the end of 2006, fewer than 50 had been produced. If we assume this number applies to the first 50, then that means the total cost to that point was a cool £250million. Yow!
Since then, though, another 150 have been produced. I highly doubt that it cost another £750million. In fact, this article points to most of the costs having been R&D costs with this quote:
That's 250 man-years. If you assume each engineer costs $250K/year for labor, benefits and overhead, that's $62.5M in labor costs developing the transmission alone. Throw in all the machine work and parts and everything else, and I'm sure you easily get up to $100M development costs on the transmission alone.
People keep throwing that £5 million per car number out there, but I seriously believe it's way out of date.
Program Intellivision!
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.
I have an unrestricted S4, and removing the limiter is the only mod it has ever had.
Now it is 4 years old, I finally had the time and safe place to test the top speed (well, "top" as in "got clamped by the rev limited instead"), and I got to a GPS measured 268 km/h before the rev limiter kicked in. It was somewhere in Germany, I happened upon this 5km stretch of perfect viewable road by chance (and had to drive another 5km before I found a chance to return and USE it :-).
Overtaking a row of 8 (I think) police vans at 220 km/h on cruise control during the run up was just a bonus (you know you're legal but still the nervousness remains).
There is, however, a good argument why you won't do this for long even if it's entirely legal and you find a safe bit of road to test. With a fuel consumption of just under 60 (yes, SIXTY) liters per 100km you will need a MUCH bigger tank to get from A to B. It's ridiculously uneconomical to push such a large amount of steel over 4 wheels against the wind.
Having said that, it's also good fun annoying BMW drivers who don't seem to know that "S4" means "brutally large factory sports tuned V8 in front, gripping on 4 wheels on sport suspension". Fnarr fnarr..
Conversions (all approx):
268 km/h = 166.5 mph
60l/100km = 1.67km/l, 4.7 MPG(UK) or 3.9 MPG(US)
Final notes for wannabees: I have had extensive high speed training. Don't try this stuff unless you're (a) stone sober and in top physical condition, (b) are 100% sure of the condition and capabilities of your car (and even then), (c) on location where such speeds are legal and (d) can do so without causing any risk to other road users (on circuit is even better) - and that's after doing some test runs.
Insert
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.
Greeeaaaat. I've always wished my GPS had glacial boot times and a Win 3.1 lookalike UI.
In a straight line yes, but with any kind of turns on the road the bike gets owned.
I mean, I have a Mazda MX-5, pretty much the cheapest roadster you can get. It has 160 hp on 950 kg, and I've left a bike with 120 hp on 200 kg behind on a very squiggly road. Bikes don't handle. And with a car, if you lose grip you have the possibility of getting back control. Lose control with a bike, and you are an organ donor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window#Fallacy_of_the_argument
They could be employed doing something worthwhile, instead. Such talented people would certainly have jobs anyway, and might be filling important engineering roles that benefit society directly, that are otherwise wanting right at this moment.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
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.
The fastest production car is not the Bugatti, but the SSC Ultimate Aero TT. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastest_car
testing 1 2 3
Actually he's pretty indicative of the average Porsche driver.
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.
Boy would you be pissed seeing a blue screen after you signed over 2.1 big bobs
It probably runs VxWorks from Wind River systems. A RTOS. It must have a lot of processors and as the price is not a concern, it must be high end (and shielded) PowerPC stuff, a lot of them.
Of course, I didn't hack the car :) Just guessing.
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
The support vehicle carrying your spares on the other hand, is a bit more of an issue...
But I'm not a yank. Thats why.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I was told that once. My response did not win me any favors. You can't outrun them, but you can jam them.
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
That's one of the reasons why there's so much interest in making them more efficient. Small percentage gains can equal a lot of energy gains. You will find that an average house can be serviced quite nicely by a smallish car engine. That is, in fact, precisely what medium sized backup generators use. They are automobile engines modified to run on propane or natural gas (sometimes they are diesel but usually NG for smaller units since you have a feed to your house). A 4 cylinder, 1.6 liter engine running at 3500rpm will give you 30kw of power and thus power an average house no problem.
Cars use a ton of energy compared to most other personal uses.
At that speed, you don't have to ... if they can't read the license plate, or even see if there IS a license plate, they can't do a whole heck of a lot. 300 to 400 mph is FAST. A friend of mine actually managed to make a stock car street legal, and he told me that, at the speeds he would do once a year (he only did about 1,500 miles per year with it, since it needed a complete engine rebuild after a few "runs"), "you know the striped lane dividers - at that speed, it's a solid white line." He blew by a radar trap, drove for a few more minutes, and parked in a restaurant. 10 minutes later, the cops came in, arguing as to whether the car in the parking lot was his. After they told him that they couldn't make a positive identification, they asked him to open the hood, just so they could take a look-see. They were impressed.
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!
But they are quite good at coming up with ridiculous car analogies. Also I might as well mention that I would be willing to cut off a testicle in exchange for a Veyron.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
that's just dumb
my wife has a Lotus. We park it in the driveway (not garaged). She drives it to work every day and parks it in the parking lot next to all the other cars.
if you are so worried about the car that you cant enjoy it, why the hell would you buy it?
You're not allowed to jam them, but you're under no obligation to return them.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Erm, 300-400 MILES per hour? Nothing street legal gets anywhere near that.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
I wouldn't want to ride in a Buick Grand National doing over 200MPH. Seriously, that car is based on the Buick Regal, a car designed for the regular driving public to drive around town at "normal" speeds. It'd probably be quite dangerous at anything north of 140. The factory did no optimization of the aerodynamics or the suspension for those kinds of speeds.
Furthermore, the car in the video is modified within an inch of its life. You'll notice that there aren't even any air filters on the turbo intakes, and it sounds like there isn't much of an exhaust system. Also, chances are good that the drivetrain would self destruct pretty rapidly if the maximum power output was achieved for more than a few seconds.
The Veyron, on the other hand, can hold its maximum speed until the tires self destruct (about 14 minutes, I think), and it can be driven in traffic without worrying about dirt damaging the engine, or having to yell over the sound of the engine. If someone made tires that would survive longer at those speeds you'd only be limited by the length of the road and the fuel tank capacity. Still, wouldn't it be cheaper to buy into something like Netjets if you need to get somewhere that fast?
The Buick Grand National was a neat car for its time (with a whopping, what 245HP stock?), and people have gotten impressive power and fuel economy out of them, but it's not really comparable to the Veyron.
Putting moderation advice in your
...but for $2.1M, it had better be the frickin' Batmobile. Complete with Batman as the chauffeur.
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
You may not be able to outrun radio waves, but you can outrun the response to radio waves.
I was pulled over racing against an imported http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_911_GT3 that the driver claimed he had personally done 190 MPH in. This was on I-75 near Tampa. Police Interceptors only go 140 MPH. Not only that they would have to accelerate up to speed to catch you. At 190 MPH you are going faster than 3 miles a min which also means you're going faster than 1 mile every 20 seconds. Exits on I-75 are about every 3 miles. So the officer would have to radio a head, then the responding officer would have to get in position. Also the officers aren't going to pit you at that speed nor try anything else to stop you since it would be to dangerous. At that speed they'll pretty much leave you alone, they may try and get your plates but other than that there isn't much they can do.
In Atlanta they operate Bell 206B Jet Ranger's for their helicopters, they only have a Top Speed of 220 MPH so the Bugatti would even be able to outrun the aerial pursuit.
Until the Veyron, they pretty much just made concept cars.
Personally, I'd rather Kim Jong-Il and the middle eastern royalty that you hate so much spend their money on cars made by Europeans than what they usually spend it on.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
OK, car is nice, but it still misses the flux capacitor. De Lorean had it decades ago.