Even an enormous blackbird flying straight at you.
“It came out of nowhere – I thought it was a brick,” Bugatti’s team pilot Andy Wallace told me the other day. We were cruising the back roads of Connecticut in the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse. Wallace was the one driving when the bird hit earlier this year. “It didn’t leave a mark.”
Pulverized, is more like it.
Which is how you’ll feel after driving the 1,200-horsepower supercar. But in the best way possible–it’s a mental pulverization rather than physical as your brain tries to make sense of the phenomena it just experienced.
“Bugatti must be the ultimate driving experience man can produce,” Wolfgang Durheimer told me recently in Germany. The Bugatti head races cars on the weekends–he’s been up to 233mph in the Veyron and is pushing for 250 on his next drive.
Indeed. And this isn’t just another Bugatti. The Veyron Vitesse is not an updated soft-top version of the 16.4 Grand Sport. It has a brand-new body made completely out of carbon fiber, redesigned air scoops, refined sculpture on the front and rear fascia, and a highly tuned suspension system that sets it far apart from its predecessors. I drove the Veyron Grand Sport a year ago in California, and the Vitesse is better.
Vitesse sits four inches off the ground (two inches at 230mph or faster), utterly stable and smooth in the most matter-of-fact way. At high speeds it never shudders, never squirms. It manages corners as a mother with child: firm but gentle. Always calm. Wallace tells me you couldn’t flip this car if you tried.
Specs, just because: It’ll go from zero to 100mph and back to zero in just over 9 seconds. Zero to 200mph to zero in 27 seconds. On the way up, you’ll hit the 60mph mark in about 2.5 seconds.
High speeds require special considerations, naturally. A spoiler deploys, and the windows go up automatically, at 112mph. Three suspension heights include Standard, Handling (for most track driving and open highways), and Top Speed (anything above 230mph – you’ll need a key to engage this one). The brakes are pure ceramic, impervious to the considerable heat generated by such aggression. Max torque is 1,500 Nm.