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

Hell yeah!

[SirBitBucket]

I bet you could rack mount a couple servers in the trunk (1U). Fastest datacenter on Earth.

Top Gear Veyron goodness

[errittus]

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"

Re:Top Gear Veyron goodness

[Quiet_Desperation]

They also demonstrated the silliest thing about it, or any 200+ MPH car... It takes quite a while to get to those speeds. You may get 0-60 in 3 seconds, but the acceleration drops off rather rapidly. About the only place you can get a car like that up to speed *is* a test track with an enormous straight.

I think it must have been 8 miles or more because they commented that the far end was out of sight due to the Earth's curvature!

A guy tried driving a super-Ferrari (an Enzo, I think) like that here in Southern California a few years back. yeah, You guessed it. Mr. Supercar? Meet Mr. Telephone Pole. Sadly, the dumbass driving it survived.

Another show mentioned how fragile they are. When they are featured on a show or test track, supercar makers box them up like ancient relics and ship them there. Contrast to the episode with the McClaren SLK that was simply driven to the filming site from two countries away.

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).

   

Re:Top Gear Veyron goodness

[Oblong_Cheese]

They would not have used the launch control (a computer-controlled system that primes the engine and gearbox for the quickest start off the line) in the Veyron - if they had, there would have been no point to the film.

The Veyron does 0-100Km/h (approx. 0-61mph) in about 2.5 seconds. The McLaren F1 does the same in 3.2 seconds.

While the F1 is indeed an engineering marvel, and probably much more enjoyable to drive on a race track than the Veyron, it is clearly outclassed, though not surprisingly given the large age difference.

Re:Top Gear Veyron goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

No... If acceleration is what you're after, at a fraction of the price, what you want is a Caterham 7 Superlight R500.
http://www.caterham.co.uk/assets/html/showroom/superlightr500.html

0-60mph 2.88 seconds
Power-to-weight 520bhp-per-tonne
Top Speed 150mph.

Under GBP40k.

I built its little brother (7RS150), with 0-60mph of 5 seconds, in my garage a couple of years ago. It's a very very very fun toy...

Re:Top Gear Veyron goodness

[Wild Wizard]

The McLaren F1 been discussed is not the race track version but rather the road legal super car built in the 90's in limited numbers.

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:Top Gear Veyron goodness

[AlXtreme]

Max air speed for an good unladen police helicopter (no extra equipment, seats, and minimal fuel) is 150mph

African or European?

Re:Top Gear Veyron goodness

[eltaco]

nope.
isle of man, for instance, has no national speed limit.
fyi, they're part of GB.

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:Top Gear Veyron goodness

[oldspewey]

This reminds me of a time years ago, when the girl I used to date had a little cottage on a SMALL recreational lake - it was maybe 2km long and less than 1km across. Some tool down at the other end of the lake bought himself a big 30 foot motherfucker of a cabin cruiser with what sounded like twin V8 I/O motors. He'd roar up and down the lake all day long: 45 seconds one way, turn around, 45 seconds the other way, turn around, 45 seconds, turn around, 45 seconds, turn around ... we'd sit out on the dock watching and speculate as to whether he was compensating for certain shortcomings, or if he was afflicted with some mild form of mental retardation.

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?

[Spoke]

And you'd certainly do more damage ecologically in a Prius.

You're full of shit. But hey, you sound like you know what you're talking about, so you must be right.

The Prius has about 90 pounds of NiMH batteries in it. Those batteries are largely benign, so you could toss them into the trash if you wanted to with the rest of your refuse if they failed, but Toyota will pay you to recycle them.

Now, I think the "toxic manufacturing process" largely comes from the nickel that goes into the battery back. Now, I'm not sure how much of each cell is nickel, but I do know that your standard steel is about 10% nickel. Given that most of your standard vehicle is steel (and I'm sure the Bugatti is made of a ton of exotic materials like carbon fiber whose manufacture is more toxic than steel and can't be recycled like steel), and that the Veyron weighs about 1,000 pounds more than the Prius - even if the Prius battery was 100% nickel the nickel content of both cars would be similar.

Plus when you factor in that the lead-acid battery in the Prius is about half the size of your typical lead-acid battery, you cut the possible leakage of lead into the environment (which is much worse than nickel) in half.

I suspect that most of your assumptions about the toxicity of the Prius (and all other NiMH batteries) come from the widely debunked CNW "Dust to Dust" marketing study which claimed that the Prius alone was responsible for the widespread destruction of the area around a mine in Canada and that a Hummer (and thus a Veyron, apparently) is more environmentally friendly than a Prius.

I'll simply point you to this link: http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/is-the-prius-battery-toxic where in the comments the claims are quite easily refuted (see especially comment #8).

Re:Guilty conscience?

[Spoke]

the emissions are as far as I remember cleaner than the air it breaths in most cities.

I dare you to suck on the tailpipe of any internal combustion vehicle. Please have paramedics on standby before you do.

While cars are very clean these days and can in fact emit exhaust that is cleaner in some aspects than normal air, any claims of exhaust coming out cleaner than "city air" has to be taken with a grain of salt.

BTW, the fact that it is able to shut off half the engine at low speeds only points out the fact that the engine is grossly over sized and powered for those speeds. It would be far more efficient if it simply had half the cylinders to start with (but then it wouldn't be able to push to speeds of 245mph).

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?

[mad.frog]

Bogus, debunked here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2186786/

Re:Guilty conscience?

[rtfa-troll]

You and the grandparent are under a misapprehension. Generally the rich do not pay "duty" or "tax". Many of the people who buy this will be oil baron types from countries with no fuel tax. The type of people who "can afford it" are the type of people who pay almost nothing. Hell even Warren Buffet (who pays 17% tax whilst his assistant pays 30%) and Bill Gates (Sr.) have been campaigning against the unfairness of how little they pay.

Once again with feeling. Tax is for little people. Like you.

P.S. Actually an interesting thing about Warren Buffet's comments is that if you look through the Google search it seems this hasn't been reported much in mainstream media????

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:Guilty conscience?

[wagnerrp]

BTW, the fact that it is able to shut off half the engine at low speeds only points out the fact that the engine is grossly over sized and powered for those speeds.

You do understand that your average commute only uses 15-35hp, right? The reason hybrid and gas-electric vehicles are so much more efficient is because their generator only needs to be sized and optimized for average power consumption, rather than peak.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[Gordonjcp]

This is why forklift trucks run on gas, and why cars which have been adapted to run on gas are so much cleaner. Since the optimum mixture is somewhat lean, there is always a certain amount of excess oxygen in the exhaust and no carbon monoxide. On gas, the emissions are predominantly carbon dioxide and water.

Because the optimum mixture for petrol is somewhat rich, you get quite a lot of carbon monoxide and a certain amount of soot.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[wfolta]

Um, no. The Prius -- especially the 2010 which I bought -- accelerates well: you'll be swerving around a minivan or a Hummer full of kids before you swerve around me. And I have absolutely no problems keeping up with traffic on US interstates.

You're either terribly opinionated or you're reflecting on how some Prius drivers DRIVE their vehicles (as opposed to what the car is capable of). In fact, it is my experience that the SLOWEST cars, the ones that leave 20-car gaps in front of them in heavy traffic and go 30 MPH on merging ramps, are non-hybrid cars being driven by people who evidently are trying to get hybrid mileage out of them. (Or who got a manual transmission and hate it.)

Yep, you can drive a Prius 70-80 and still be getting 40 MPG.

Re:Guilty conscience?

[canUbeleiveIT]

Actually, rich people are the lousiest charitable givers.

That is false. Actually, as a percentage of income, the middle class is the worst. The poor give away between 4 and 5%, the rich between 3 and 4%. The middle class gives much less than either. Unfortunately, all classes are starkly divided along the lines of givers and nongivers. While the average poor person is much more likely to be a nongiver, the averages are "fixed" by the one-in-four poor person who gives with extraordinary generosity.

This will be unpopular here, but the fact is that the group that gives the most is religious conservatives (disclaimer: I am religious but not conservative). And before anyone tries to negate the giving of the religious because a lot of that money is tithes, etc., understand that religious conservative people are actually more likely to give to secular charities than secular people, despite the fact that secular households earn about 16% more on average than religious households.

Re:Yeah but....

[therufus]

More importantly, at 2.1 million dollars, will it blend?

It's the ultimate halo car

[SuperBanana]

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.

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:If I ever see..

[MichaelSmith]

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

Re:A bit overblown

[Goldberg's Pants]

"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.

Re:Yeah but....

[colinrichardday]

It comes with Windows Mobile on the navigation system.

Re:"Guilty conscience"

[nidarus]

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!

Re:Just in time for my midlife crysis!

[4D6963]

A mid-life Crysis? Damn, all I had was a mid-life Grand Theft Auto.

Bugatti Veyron = 27 MP3's

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda puts it in perspective..............

Re:A bit overblown

[Tyler Eaves]

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.

Finance a car loan

[unlametheweak]

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.

My question

[Anonymous Coward]

What advantages does this motor car have over, say, a train -- which I could also afford?

Bugatti brand

[SpaghettiPattern]

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.

In real units...

[david.given]

...1000 horsepower is 750 kilowatts. Your average house electricity supply is 30 kilowatts. A single wind turbine, the really big kind they use in wind farms, generates about 1500 kilowatts.

1000 horsepower is a lot of power.

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....

[Rei]

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.

Re:It is not about the top speed...

[Spoke]

I've got a Porsche 911 C4 with a 300 horse V6

Hate to tell ya, but you've got a flat 6, not a V6, sitting behind you...

Re:If I ever see..

[Mr Z]

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:

After the release of the car, it has been reported that while each Veyron is being sold for £840,000, the production costs of the car are approximately £5 million per vehicle. This is not the price to produce one vehicle, but rather the cost of the entire Veyron project divided by the number of vehicles produced at that time. As Bugatti, and therefore Volkswagen, are making such a loss, it has been likened by automotive journalist Jeremy Clarkson to Concorde; in that they are test-beds for advancements in technology and developed as exercises in engineering.

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:

The seven-speed semi-automatic gearbox took 50 engineers five years to complete while with all the research and development involved,

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.

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. :)

I did the top speed in an S4..

[cheros]

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.

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:Think of the Virgens!

[Gandalf_Greyhame]

I completely disagree with sacrificing virgins, so anybody who buys this car is implicitly supporting the destruction of virgins.

Male virgins, yes. Now give me my car!

That is why he is against the destruction of virgins... self preservation

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"

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

[KahabutDieDrake]

I was told that once. My response did not win me any favors. You can't outrun them, but you can jam them.

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

[tomhudson]

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

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.