My take on the Bugatti Veyron 16.4

The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 has been unleashed on the world, and apparently it has done what it set out to do - dethrone the Mclaren F1 as the fastest production road going model ever. Its been clocked at 253 mph, significantly more than the 241.3 mph served up by the F1. To be honest though, I'm not very impressed with it.

To begin with, I can't figure out why it costs what it does. 1.3 million USD for this car is too much; its being priced at what they think its worth, not as a function of its cost. The engine, a quad-turbocharged W-16 is a variant of other engines offered in the VW family lines, so there's no extra special cost there. They haven't spent money on crazy exotic materials to keep the weight (which there's plenty of) down. So why the big money - for status?

The car doesn't dethrone the mighty F1 in my book for many reasons. The approach to building this car was totally wrong. They added all kinds of shit, used common materials and smack-bang, the weight of the car ended up at just under 4200 lbs. Do you have any idea how much that is? Thats SUV terrority, folks! So to make this car go really fast, they put in an 8-liter 16 cylinder engine, then quad turbocharged it. Fuel economy, as a term, has to be written as fuel burn rate in liters per second to be more accurate. I'm sure a 747-400D, loaded with 568 passengers and their cargo is a bit better on gas.

And for all those turbochargers and cylinders, and all that displacement, they manage a specific output of ... 123 hp/L. The S2000 has a specific output of 120 hp/L without any turbochargers, and the BMW M5 even has 102 hp/L without turbos. So basically, good engine engineering isn't there.

I'll only sorta agree with the decision to go with AWD as well. Its been shown that AWD, at least the AWD that Audi has, isn't that great around the track. It also adds weight and makes the car feel sluggish, and definitely contributes to understeer. Still, the car needs the top speed crown, so I'm guessing the AWD *MIGHT* help stability at that speed. Last I checked though, top fuel dragsters and rocket cars didn't use AWD.

If we compare this car to the Mclaren F1, a clear winner emerges in terms of engineering - the F1. Gordon Murray personally oversaw every design aspect of the car, and when one man with a dream does that ... something special happens. The Mclaren F1 was a whopping 1600 lbs lighter than the Veyron, something accomplished with extensive use of carbon fiber and titanium. The engine was custom built by BMW, a 627 hp unit of 6.1 liters in size. Specific output - 103 hp/L. It used gold heat reflectors all around the engine bay. The custom molded chassis was so safe, 2 customers walked away from 200 mph crashes without a scratch. The engine was bolted directly to the chassis, just like F1 cars. It didn't compromise anything with space for 3, their luggage, a Kenwood sound system and more. The car's computer had a modem that could call up the factory from anywhere in the world and perform diagnostic checks. All this, in 1990.

Am I being told that the difference an additional 1600 lbs, 360 hp, 4 cylinders, 4 turbochargers and 16 years of progress make are an additional 11.7 mph and a helluva lot more fuel being consumed? Shame on you, auto industry.