I was in a drug store the other day and happened upon the most recent copy of Men’s Vogue. To my surprise they had an absolutely fantastic article about the Bugatti Veyron, and how it may actually be the greatest car ever built; past, present or even future. Unfortunately, the use of “future” isn’t so much a proclamation of the Veyron’s omnipresent greatness, but more so a reality check as to the state of our world and the true cost of being the World’s Greatest Car.
Flash. It’s two years later, November 2007. There’s unease in Molsheim, a dully fastidious village about 20 minutes from Strasbourg, in the Alsace region of France, and the ancestral home of the Bugatti company. Even in a world awash with petrodollars and hedge fund billionaires, the Veyron has found only about 180 buyers for the projected 300 to be built. The Veyron project — named for Bugatti’s Le Mans–winning driver, Pierre Veyron — is estimated to have emptied more than half a billion euros from the coffers of VW Group, which resurrected the storied French marque a decade ago. And for what? As Ettore Bugatti himself found out in the 1930s with his Royale project — a stupendous ultra-luxury locomotive — these kinds of cost-is-no-object performance pieces almost never make any money. (See Porsche Carrera GT, Mercedes-Benz’s SLR McLaren or Maybach, et al.)
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This is a time for lovers of fine automobiles to be alert. An age is passing. Fifty years from now, the Bugatti Veyron will seem like the final erotic death roll of a doomed technology. It occurs to me that we will not recognize the moment when we drive the finest automobile in all history — it’s something we can only realize in retrospect.
And yet, I’ve got a feeling.
As for the Bugatti losing it’s title of world’s fastest production car? Don’t think Bugatti is going down without a fight.
“We look forward to defending our title as the fastest car in the world,” says Dr. Paefgen, with the air of someone who’s just been asked to wrestle with a hobo. “We know what it took to build the Veyron, and I don’t think anyone can match it.”
If you even remotely consider yourself an automotive enthusiast, then I strongly suggest you read this article. This is one of the best journalistic pieces on any automotive topic I have read in years.
Full Article: Auto Erotic
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