I'd still like to know how the SSC fans feel about this...

 

When I was younger, I put my 1982 chevy truck through stresses that will probably never be seen in some super cars... boggin, hauling, ramming, jumping, more bogging, hauling while boggging, jumping while boggin AND hauling... full throttle gear drops, reverse to forward full throttle burnouts... The tranny never fell out. It doesn't have to be technologically advanced to hold together or be relatively reliable.


250 in a straight line would probably be a vacation for it!

 

subgraphic's story above is a perfect illustration of the reason why I consider your "question" rhetorical.

Why do you find it hard to believe that a car equal to the Veyron and Enzo in peformance could withstand 5 years of driving enough so that the gearbox wouldn't be in danger of falling through the chassis? Because it's built in America or because the budget of SSC is not quite on par with Ferrari or Bugatti? Do you not think there's a reason why SSC is a comparable car in every regard to performance? It is because they are using similar technology. Fit and finish comes with age but physics and aerodynamics don't change according to your budget or experience.

No, the gearbox is not going to drop from the chassis in 5 years. I'll make sure to have an owner contact the internet after 5 years of trouble free ownership to further win hearts and minds.

 

The tranny/clutch in a bog standard Land Rover Defender will happily take 300k+ miles of sheer abuse without any fuss. But, like your 82 Chevy, it doesn't exactly have a 1000 bhp. So when extrapolating this feat to cars like the Veyron and Ultimate Aero, you're simplifying matters too far IMO.

Sure, simple, 'kalashnikov style' engineering often yields the most robust results and in a 4x4 workhorse a few hundred extra lbs here and there don't matter that much. In a performance focused thoroughbred on the other hand, balancing weight vs. strength is usually the top priority of the design brief.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but from all I've know (including all I've learned being an aerospace engineering student), it is extremely difficult.

 

Actually, the fact that it's built in America adds substantially to its credibility since the good ol' USA still has some of the very best engineers in the world.

I don't give a rat's ass whether it has a 6 cd changer or widescreen satnav or if the stitches on the dash aren't perfect. That comes with the territory and isn't the yardstick by which to judge this type of car anyway. But I remain skeptical whether the overall package can match what is put forth by the - in this case European - competition. And that skepticism is indeed primarily based on the significant difference in available resources.

PS a $40k Caterham R500 will own a Veyron around a racetrack and there are probably some Supras out there which can outrun it at the TX Mile, but I still wouldn't argue those cars are superior to the Bug.

PPS Nobody here is attacking America or American engineering, please don't turn this into a us vs. them discussion where everybody who isn't praising the UA into heaven is automatically labeled as a Euro snob. We both know you're far more intelligent than that.

 

Holding 1,000+ horsepower (torque is actually the metric to be concerned with) in a relatively conventional transaxle is not terribly difficult.

What's difficult is making the driveline survive launches at that torque, and other instances of rapid application of huge amounts of torque. Roll-on top speed runs do not really generate that much gearbox trauma. Dropping the clutch from redline when there's lots of available traction does.

The Veyron deals with this by putting computers in control of the clutch engagement. The SSC deals with this by building a strong gearbox and having a greatly simplified layout.

Contrary to what is apparently popular belief, building a gearbox is not terribly expensive. Outsourcing it to the likes of Quaife, Getrag, Xtrac, etc, even less so. It does not take billions of dollars to engineer a car that will survive frequent applications of big torque/power. There have been numerous examples of this simple fact over the last 20 years of automotive engineering. The Viper, recent Corvettes, Supra, Skylines, etc.

Much of the "lore" surrounding the Veyron is generated marketing gobbledegook rehashed by people who don't know any better. You can take a $20,000, 17 year old japanese sports car and rape and pillage everything the Veyron does or ever will do, on the stock driveline components. Don't need 10 radiators to do it, either.

As I've often said, the Veyron's achievement is that any idiot with zero driving ability can make it go very fast, not that it goes very fast.

 

Sorry but it's so laughable... so many wannabes who think they can build a Veyron with less cooling and cheaper but still as solid as it is now.
First, the Veyron is not at it's limits...
Second...show me a 20.000$ 1000 hp supra/skyline/corvette/viper whatever who can do 300-400 km/h autobahn runs without ANY probleme and then put it directly in stop and go traffic with 40°C.
Bugatti is a company, and like every other company, they could'nt afford to build a car which is ultra fast but unreliable as shit.
You can build a faster car than the veyron, but it's not as reliable, it's not as quiet, it's not as comfortable, it's not as luxurious, it's not as safe, ...

 

^ I agree, A friend of mine who has built a supra that is faster than a veyron to a certain extent, has spent almost 150k just on modifying the car, that excludes the price of getting a supra. You can make any car go like stink, but that doesn't mean it will be reliable or safe after many years of abuse. And that was not a reference to the SSC.

 

Cars designed to a simpler ethos require considerably less cooling as they're generating considerably less heat. You don't need 16 cylinders, four turbos, and an overly complex flappy paddle gearbox to make a car go ridiculously fast reliably. Something that SSC, McLaren, Jaguar and others have proven over the years.

I was quite obviously implying the base, not final cost of such a car. I know of dozens of the aforementioned cars-- yes, with ~$100k worth of parts in them-- that can quite happily do those speeds all day long. And yes, there are certainly trade-offs when it comes to build quality and interior "niceness" and this, that and the other thing. However, that quite obviously was not my point. My point was that while the Veyron is fast, it is not the end all be all of vehicular performance, and many, many cars which Veyron fanboys would consider to be "lesser" cars can go quite a lot faster for a tiny fraction of the "engineering dollars" expressed, which tends to disprove the contention that you can only make a 250+ mph car if you have a few billion dollars to spend on the project.

Regardless, the Veyron is a technical achievement. However, fanboy nonsense aside, it was developed for exactly one reason and with exactly one market in mind: To deliver bragging rights to the glitterati, who generally have next to no driving skill and yet love to blather on about owning the fastest/biggest/most expensive X.

Other cars are designed to different markets. The SSC, for example, is aimed at the same sort of people who'd buy a Gumpert or Ascari. Very wealthy enthusiasts who actually have a reasonably cultivated ability to keep the shiny side up. I would say the SSC serves the market it was intended for as well as the Veyron does its own.

I'm not entirely certain where the "reliability" nittering comes from, but it's not like the SSC, Mclaren F1, or other supercars of that particular ilk are known for randomly exploding left and right.

 

^I would hope SSC is not known for randomly exploding, they just started producing cars.

On another note, it would be an epic race, SSC against a veyron.