$2 million Bugatti Veyron packs plenty of tech

Dan Carney • E-mail

“What if?” It's the powerful question that has fired the imagination of innovators throughout history. And would-be innovators too, sitting bored in school, imagining “what if?” when sketching their dream cars.

This was the kind of unrestrained thinking, backed by an unrestrained budget, that produced the original Bugatti Veyron, a shocking 1,000 horsepower, all-wheel-drive cruise missile of a car. But then someone said, “What if … we cut the roof off and made it a convertible?” and recently, the $2 million Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport was born.

Naturally, a $2 million car comes packed with enough gadgets for James Bond, some aimed at helping corral those thousand horses and others technology that performs the magicians’ trick of doing their work without attracting notice.

We should immediately address the capabilities for which the Veyron is notorious: Yes, its 8-liter, W-16 engine features four turbochargers which really do pump up its prodigious power production to a mythical 1,000 horsepower. There is even a “horsepower” gauge on the far left side of the dashboard that shows how much of the Marianas Trench-deep power reserves the driver is tapping at any time.

Also, yes, the Veyron really does go 250 miles per hour — 253, actually — but only after some suitably dramatic double-secret agent, nuclear launch-code-type preparations.

Hidden capabilities
As any suitably imaginative dreamer knows, such cars are subtle in their function, with hidden capabilities and gadgets that whir into action only when needed, and the Veyron doesn’t disappoint.

Something as uncouth as a big, garish flat-panel video display disfiguring the leather-swaddled dash might be acceptable in lesser cars that only cost six figures. But in the seven-figure price range, navigation and back-up camera displays must be less, um, obvious. In the case of the Veyron, the rear-view mirror houses the display screen in its left-most quadrant when those functions are called upon.

Bugatti The 1,000-horsepower Bugatti Veyron includes a Hewlett-Packard iPaq PDA running Bugatti’s own custom software.

The driver enters the navigation destination using the touch-screen interface on an included Hewlett-Packard iPaq HX2000 PDA running Bugatti’s own custom software.

The iPaq also serves as the conduit for pairing a phone with Bluetooth to the car, and runs a utility called Bugatti View, which gives drivers a summary of the car’s activities. It presents the pressure of all four tires, and reports on how much engine power has been used while driving, the car’s average speed, the lateral and longitudinal acceleration and even tire temperatures.

Asked whether it seems curious that the world’s most expensive car relies on off-the-shelf consumer electronics as its driver interface for the car’s electronic systems, Bugatti representative David Jenkins noted: “Bugatti makes motorcars, not little computers.”

Speed potential
Of course, James Bond and Speed Racer can both do more than navigate with their cars’ gadgets and so it is with the Veyron. Much of this is related to the car’s astounding speed potential.

The first speed-related function is automatic: the windows automatically raise at 100 mph to promote aerodynamic stability. In a car that leaps from a stop to window-raising velocity in a scant five seconds, the launch involves the kind of face-stretching, chest-compressing forces associated with the latest amusement park “Terrifying Snake of Catastrophe” thrill ride than with anything as mundane as an automobile.

Piloting the Veyron up to that point has the sensation of taxiing a World War II war bird to the flight line. The massive engine lopes lazily, but authoritatively. There is never any doubt of the gigantic reservoir of power within, and like aircraft piston engines, the Veyron’s powerplant runs at relatively low speeds, so it rumbles and thunders like an old fighter rather than shrieking like a Formula 1 racer.

Tip into the gas pedal and the engine’s startling cacophony blasts out of the dual intake scoops that aim forward at the occupants’ heads.

Now the fighter plane sounds angry, like it has engaged in a dogfight, and its fury is unexpected because of the car’s placidity up to that point. Jump off the gas pedal and Dr. Jekyll returns.

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