It is fair to say, however, that the Veyron was never going to struggle in a straight-line, not with a thousand or more horses under rein. What was of at least as much interest to me was how his two-tonne car behaved once we left the autostrada and headed for the hills.
Here another fundamental difference between it and the likes of the Ferrari Enzo and Porsche Carrera GT emerges. You may be disappointed to hear it but, by ultimate standards, the Veyron is not agile; no car of this weight ever could be. It lacks the interaction and feel of a lightweight road racer and feels much more like a feral Mercedes SLR in its responses.
To be fair, it disguises its weight as much as a two-tonne car ever could, but the simple truth is that if you're looking for a car that behaves as if it were born for the race track, you should buy yourself a racing car.
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| Despite the power, the Veyron is very much a road car |
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The Veyron, for all its speed, massive grip and crushing braking power, is as far from being a track car as a Formula One car is from being a road car. One is not right and other wrong, they are just different.
However, there is a serious point here: the comparative lack of interaction offered by the Veyron relative to the most communicative supercars of all time - in my mind the McLaren F1 and Ferrari F40 - does damage its overall appeal and, if I could have one of the three as a device purely for imparting total driving pleasure, it would be the Ferrari, slowest by far, that I would chose. If I have to cross Europe however, I'd probably take the Veyron.
I am not going to descend into the political debate about the rights and wrongs of making a car like the Veyron available for use on the public road. My role is simply to tell you what it's like to drive and if you think it's irrelevant, there will be little I can say to convince you otherwise - not least because quite a lot of me agrees with you. Nor will I be drawn to say whether it is irresponsible, other than to note that any car in the wrong set of hands is a potentially lethal weapon.
All I know is I want to savour the thrill of being pushed down the road by one thousand horsepower one more time: it may be childish, but it's no less a thrill for that. Bugatti even gives you a gauge so you can see the moment the four-figure output is reached, though your time would probably be more sensibly spent watching the road.
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| Veyron: a true ultimate |
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OK, so that does not qualify it as the finest car ever made and, perhaps, given that it is the most expensive car ever made, it should be. But as a piece of engineering, I am in awe of the Veyron and feel privileged beyond words to have made its acquaintance.
In the simplest terms, I'm just glad it exists. Any true ultimate is intrinsically interesting, as is anything that can do things that have never been done before. And the real scale of the Veyron's achievement is not so much that it does things beyond the scope of any other road car, but that it does them without really trying.
