Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse

[Ratickle]

Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse is the fastest convertible in the world.


While Bugatti's other speed records are up for contention, no other car can hit 254 mph without a roof.

By Clifford Atiyeh


Bugatti already built the world's fastest convertible, and now it's made another one so that guy in Texas can shut up a little while longer.

The latest Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse hit 254.04 mph with the roof off on Volkswagen's Ehra-Lessien test track, a closed loop of two 5.6-mile straightaways unlike any stretch of tarmac or salt flats on the planet.

Originally, the Grand Sport Vitesse was limited to 233 mph due to air turbulence, but Bugatti made a roof spoiler and some kind of "intricately designed windbreak" to effectively allow the most hellish headwind mankind can feel while still on the ground.

Chinese racing driver Anthony Liu took the wheel in the weeks prior to the Shanghai Auto Show, where Bugatti is expected to reveal a World Record Car edition commemorating the speed and another Veyron that reportedly will pack at least 1,600 horsepower, as opposed to the 1,200 horsepower and 1,106 lb-ft of torque in the Grand Sport Vitesse.

In 2010, Bugatti set the record for the world's fastest production car with the Super Sport coupe, which hit 267.86 mph on the same track.

And that's where we get back to the guy from Texas, John Hennessey of Houston's Hennessey Performance, who recently claimed his supercar beat Bugatti at several record attempts.

In January, Hennessey took a Guinness World Record for the quickest acceleration in a production car from zero to 300 kph. He later bragged, unofficially, that his 1,244-horsepower Venom GT hit 200 mph a full eight seconds before the Veyron Super Sport.

Earlier this month, Hennessey said the Venom GT was also the fastest production car in the world, despite posting a slower speed than Bugatti's 2010 world record.

Apparently, even Guinness is knocking Bugatti's prior record since it achieved the near-268-mph speed by deactivating a limiter that was fitted to the production models. And Bugatti's latest run was done in only one direction, not two, which normally is required for a speed record.

Does this spat between a Texas tuner shop and a multibillion-dollar automaker really matter? In this age of conservation and eco-friendliness, we're just happy fights like this can be fought at all.

http://editorial.autos.msn.com/blogs...cid=autos_4190

[old377guy]

Very cool; Anthony Liu -- Lucy Liu's bro?

[poncho]

Very cool. I've always liked the Bugatti Veyron. Read somewhere that VW Group owners of Bugatti lose money on every Veyron they sell. So I'm surprised they are still selling them.

[poncho]

Found a mention of the losing money I've herd:

Volkswagen's decision to acquire the Bugatti brand was a head-scratcher when it was made in 1998 and remains so 15 years later. After all, the original maker of Bugatti automobiles had been shut down for half a century, and the name had little resonance. VW went ahead to develop a monster it called the Bugatti Veyron, a super-fast (top speed: 250 mph) and super-expensive ($1.7 million) car hardly ever seen outside the collections of Middle Eastern sheiks. Only 30 were sold in 2011. One analyst estimates that VW loses $7 million on every Veyron it builds.

If that $7million figure is true, wonder why they build them.