World beater
In 2005, when the motor industry was generally preoccupied with rapidly increasing demand both for SUVs and (on a shorter-term basis, as it would turn out) for diesel engines, Bugatti introduced a model which created widespread fascination, even though hardly anyone could afford to buy it.
Two decades on, faster cars have been put into production, but the Veyron is still regarded as one of the most extraordinary machines ever made available to the public, and will no doubt continue to be discussed in hushed tones for many years.
Here we’ll be looking not only at the car itself, but at its important place in the long history of the Bugatti marque.
The beginnings of Bugatti
Bugatti is named after its founder, the Italian designer Ettore Bugatti, whose Type 1 car went into limited production in 1898, when Ettore was still a teenager.
His later work was extremely varied, and included the Peugeot Bébé (‘baby’) of 1913, the outstandingly successful Type 35 racing car and the monumental Royale pictured here, whose straight-eight engine, with a capacity of nearly 13 litres, was one of the largest ever fitted to a production car.
Ettore Bugatti died in 1947, and his company (based in Molsheim, which was in Germany when he moved there but is now part of France due to a redrawing of the border between the two countries in 1919) went into a decline and eventually faded away entirely.
Bugatti part two
The Bugatti trademark was acquired in the 1980s by Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli, who later achieved the distinction of owning Bugatti and Lotus at the same time.
This chapter of the story is short, because Bugatti folded again in 1995, but it includes the production of the four-wheel-drive EB110, a supercar with a mid-mounted, quad-turbocharged, 3.5-litre, V12 engine.
The EB112 was a four-door saloon powered by a quite different V12 – this time a naturally aspirated, 6-litre unit – but it was never officially put on sale.
While the EB110, pictured here in standard (red) and SuperSport (blue) forms, was certainly not a Veyron, it was far closer to being one than any previous Bugatti, and can reasonably be considered the Veyron’s predecessor.
Bugatti Automobiles
In the late 1990s, Ferdinand Piëch, then head of Volkswagen, had two ambitions relevant to the future existence of the Veyron: to create an engine of a type never seen before, and to add Bugatti to the VW stable.
He achieved both, and the first publicly visible result was the Bugatti EB118 (pictured), a concept coupé styled by Italdesign and powered by a 6.25-litre W18 motor which amounted, more or less, to three Volkswagen VR6 engines.
Neither this car, revealed by Bugatti Automobiles in 1998, nor the mechanically similar EB218 saloon which followed it a year later, appear at first sight to have much to do with the Veyron, but the third concept in the series unquestionably does.
Bugatti EB 18/3 Chiron
The third of the Italdesign concepts was fitted with the same W18 engine used in the EB118 and EB218, but this time it was mounted just ahead of the rear wheels in a genuine sports-car body.
The engine’s layout (18 cylinders in three groups) is referred to in the middle part of the name, the first being of course the initials of Ettore Bugatti.
The final part, which would be used again for the Veyron’s successor, honours Louis Chiron, the racing driver who, partnered with Achille Varzi, won the 1931 French Grand Prix in a Bugatti Type 51.
Bugatti EB 18/4 Veyron
Not long after the 18/3 made its debut at the 1999 Frankfurt motor show, the 18/4 Veyron was unveiled in Tokyo.
The fourth of the pre-production concepts was styled not by Italdesign but by Jozef Kabaň (under the leadership of Hartmut Warkuss) and named after the Bugatti engineer and test driver Pierre Veyron, winner of the 1939 Le Mans 24 Hours in a Type 57 shared with Jean-Pierre Wimille.
In this car, Bugatti used the W18 engine for the last time.
A year later, it was announced that the production model would be powered by something quite different – an 8-litre W16 which was in effect two 4-litre, narrow-angle V8s joined together, and which was also used in the Audi Rosemeyer and Bentley Hunaudières concept cars.
Chassis 5.0
The car known within Bugatti as Chassis 5.0 was one of the last six Veyrons built before full-scale production began in 2005.
Part of its role was to act as what Bugatti describes as, ‘the testbed for the marque’s world-class engineers to perfect the performance of systems critical to unlocking the vehicle’s supreme capabilities’, and as, ‘an essential means of testing and enhancing assembly processes’.
Beyond that, Chassis 5.0 was the most visible sign, to the public, of what the production Veyron would be.
It was on display at the official opening of Bugatti’s Molsheim Atelier facility in September 2005, represented the Veyron on television and was taken around the world for demonstration tours and test drives, and spending ‘a period of time with a discerning customer’.
On sale
Customers of considerable means were able to start buying Bugatti Veyrons in 2005.
At that point, the quad-turbo, W16 engine was quoted as producing 1001hp – in imperial units, a less headline-grabbing but still formidable 987bhp – and drove all four wheels through a seven-speed, twin-clutch gearbox of the DSG type.
Carbon-ceramic brake discs were standard, and a large rear spoiler, not considered necessary at up to 220kph (137mph), was deployed from that speed to 375kph (233mph), giving the car up to 350kg (772lb) more downforce.
Speed
Part of the design brief for the Bugatti Veyron was an insistence that it should be able to exceed 406kph (252mph), the speed achieved by a Porsche 917 along the Mulsanne Straight – also known as the Hunaudières Straight – during the Le Mans 24 Hour race in the 1970s.
Sure enough, according to the official paperwork, the Veyron was capable of 407kph, but in April 2005 one example was measured at 408.47kph.
This was achieved by selecting top-speed mode before the engine was started, thereby allowing the car to accelerate beyond 375kph, reducing the downforce (partly to reduce strain on the tyres) and limiting the amount of available steering lock.
That last point might seem alarming, but top-speed mode was immediately shut off, and full steering permitted once more, as soon as the driver applied the brakes.
Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport
The Bugatti Veyron range was expanded for the first time with the introduction of the Grand Sport convertible.
A pre-production version was unveiled the evening before the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California in August 2008, and the first production model, which would not be built until the following year, was auctioned at the same event for $2.9 million plus buyer’s premium, making a total of $3.19 million.
With the removable hardtop in place, the Grand Sport had the same 407kph top speed as the regular Veyron, but this was reduced to 360kph (224mph) when the roof was retracted, and to just 130kph (81mph) when a separate folding roof was raised.
To compensate for the loss in strength inevitable when any solid-roofed car is adapted into a convertible, Bugatti added many reinforcements, including to the side skirts, transmission tunnel and B pillars.
Bugatti Veyron Super Sport
As if 1001hp (987bhp) wasn’t enough to be getting on with, Bugatti uprated the W16 engine for the Super Sport derivative, first shown in public at Pebble Beach in August 2010.
Larger turbochargers and intercoolers helped raise the maximum output by just short of 20% to 1200hp, or 1184bhp.
This was considered a little too much for the Veyron to cope with in its original form, so Bugatti took the trouble to revise the suspension, fitting new shock absorbers and stronger anti-roll bars, while also enlarging the front air intakes, and adding a double diffuser and central exhaust outlets at the rear.
The top speed was electronically limited to 415kph (258mph), a feature which would soon cause some controversy.
The world record
Several weeks before the Super Sport’s debut at Pebble Beach, Pierre-Henri Raphanel (pictured) drove an example at an average of 431kph (268mph) over two runs at the Volkswagen Group’s Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany, setting – it was initially believed – a new Guinness world speed record for production cars.
According to Bugatti chief engineer, Dr Wolfgang Schreiber, this was beyond expectations: “We took it that we would reach an average value of 425kph, but the conditions today were perfect and allowed even more.”
That 431kph was well beyond the Super Sport’s artificially limited top speed of 415kph, and for some time after the run there was a discussion about whether disabling the limiter to make this possible took the car beyond production specifications.
Eventually, the conclusion was reached that it did not, and the record became official.
Bugatti Veyron Super Sport World Record Edition
In celebration of its achievement at Ehra-Lessien, Bugatti created a limited run of Veyrons right at the start of Super Sport production.
The first five customer cars were known as World Record Edition and, perhaps inevitably, were already sold even before Bugatti began building them.
All five had the same colour scheme as the actual record car, namely exposed black carbon with orange highlights.
The last coupé
In June 2011, Bugatti announced that a customer (identified only as ‘European’, which didn’t narrow the field by much) had placed an order for what would be the last Veyron coupé ever built.
Total production would amount to exactly 300 units, including the model as originally designed and the more powerful Super Sport derivative, which had been launched only the previous year.
The Veyron story was by no means over, however, since the Grand Sport would remain available until 2015, and would indeed soon be joined by a new version.
Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse
The fourth and final standard production version of the Bugatti Veyron was announced in July 2012.
As might have been expected, it was a combination of the existing Grand Sport convertible and Super Sport coupé – or, to look at it another way, a roadster with an engine capable of producing up to 1183bhp.
The Grand Sport Vitesse name made sense for two reasons. First, vitesse is the French word for ‘speed’, and second, Grand Sport Super Sport would have sounded clumsy.
The official top speed was 375kph (233mph) in normal mode, or 410kph (255mph) with the limiter disengaged.
Another record
In 2013, Bugatti returned to Ehra-Lessien for an attempt on another speed record.
A Grand Sport Vitesse with the by now familiar black and orange colour scheme, and driven by Anthony Liu, achieved an average of 409kph, or 254mph.
This was slightly below the Vitesse’s claimed maximum, but it was the highest speed for a production convertible measured by an independent body.
Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse World Record Car Edition
As it had in the past, Bugatti commemorated a speed record by producing a limited run of Veyrons.
The 409kph car was unmodified mechanically, so in that respect the WRC (as its name is conveniently shortened to) was identical to it, and to all other Grand Sport Vitesses.
There were, however, some specific styling elements, including the unique feature of orange wheels.
While the WRC was hardly a car for the masses, it was slightly more common than the Super Sport World Record Edition coupé, because Bugatti built eight examples rather than just five.
The end of the Veyron
Not including pre-production models, Bugatti built 450 Veyrons from 2005-’15.
That already neat number was divided even more neatly into 300 coupés – which, as mentioned previously, were discontinued in 2011 – and 150 of the Grand Sport convertibles.
The last to be sold (to a customer in the Middle East) was given the appropriate French name La Finale, and was displayed alongside the first production Veyron at the Geneva motor show in March 2015.
The successor
The Veyron gave way to the Chiron, which had the same mid-engined layout, four-wheel drive and 8-litre, quad-turbo, W16 engine.
The W16 was significantly updated, producing up to 1500hp (1479bhp) initially with more to come, and some versions of the Chiron were capable of more than 300mph, well beyond the highest speed ever achieved by a Veyron.
However, the Chiron was clearly another interpretation of the same basic idea, and it would be fair to describe it as the successor to the Veyron in a far deeper sense than the Veyron was to the EB110.
Bugatti Veyron Fbg par Hermès
In addition to the record cars mentioned earlier, there were several special-edition Veyrons, and while some were built in very small numbers, and others were unique, they represent a surprisingly large proportion of the model’s total production.
One example, displayed at the Geneva show in 2008, is the Fbg par Hermès, the ‘Fbg’ part of its name being a reference to the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris where the Hermès company has its headquarters.
Based on the original coupé (the only version available at the time, because the Grand Sport would not be unveiled until later in the year), the car had an interior designed by Gabriele Pezzini and partly created by Hermès, which applied the bull calfskin upholstery.
The Fbg, of which four coupés were produced (and later some Grand Sport equivalents), was also notable for its eight-spoke alloy wheels, reminiscent of those on the Type 35 Grand Prix car of the 1920s.
Bugatti Veyron Bleu Centenaire
Anyone with even a slight grasp of the French language will understand immediately the two things this unique Veyron’s name signifies.
Revealed in 2009, it was created to mark the centenary of the original Bugatti car company, and it was painted blue, a traditional Bugatti colour.
In fact, although it’s not immediately obvious from the photo here, there were two shades of blue, one matt and one gloss.
To provide a contrast, several of the exterior details were made of polished anodised aluminium, while the brake calipers were red.
Bugatti Veyron Pur Sang
Paints of several colours were used for the Veyron over the years, but the Pur Sang (‘pure blood’) special edition is distinguished by the fact that it wasn’t painted at all.
Its silver and black scheme was determined entirely by the bodywork materials, which were aluminium and carbonfibre respectively.
Only five examples were built, so, while an individual Pur Sang is not unique, it is certainly rare.
Bugatti Veyron L’Or Blanc
The L’Or Blanc (or ‘white gold’) Grand Sport is perhaps the most visually remarkable of all the Bugatti Veyron special editions.
The body was painted in a complex combination of dark blue and white, and five layers of clear lacquer were then added on top.
What’s more, the Royal Porcelain Factory in Berlin created several porcelain inlays used both on the exterior and in the cabin, including for the wheel-centre badges, the fuel- and oil-filler caps, and the centre console.
The Bernar Venet Veyron
Bugatti invited French artist Bernar Venet to apply his talents to a Veyron Grand Sport, adding to the already long tradition of ‘art cars’.
Acknowledging that “a Bugatti is already a work of art in itself”, Venet took the opportunity to “translate my passion for mathematic equations and scientific treatises into three-dimensional form”.
His design included many algebraic symbols, along with a prominent 16, representing the number of cylinders in the Veyron’s engine.
The car, described by Bugatti as a ‘one-of-a-kind sculptural work’, was revealed at the Art Basel Miami Beach event in 2012.
Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Lang Lang
For those who may not be aware, Lang Lang is a globally famous Chinese pianist, and also the inspiration for a one-off version of the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport revealed in Qatar in February 2024.
Appropriately enough, the colour scheme was black and white, representing the keys of a piano or indeed keyboard instruments in general.
The interior door trim included a five-line motif signifying the musical stave.
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