Autocar: Bugatti Veyron Supersport Test Review
#1
10-18-2010 | 11:06 AM
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| TS Official Automotive Enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 3,533
Autocar: Bugatti Veyron Supersport Test Review Bugatti Veyron Super Sport review
It is its breadth of ability that separates it so completely from the rest of the automotive world.
What is it?
There are all sorts of crazed statistics about the new £2m Bugatti Veyron Super Sport with which you can fray the outer edges of your imagination. Quite apart from the fact that it boasts 198bhp beyond that of the regular 987bhp Veyron and can do 268mph, when the crankshaft of this car’s 8.0-litre W16 engine is rotating at precisely 6400rpm in seventh gear, it will quaff its way through a 100-litre tank of fuel in just under eight minutes.
The W16 quad-turbo engine also develops its maximum torque figure the entire time between 3000 and 5000rpm, so there is no torque ‘peak’ as such. How much twisting power does it actually generate? How does 1105lb ft grab you? Or, to put it another way, near enough twice as much as a Noble M600 – one of the most potent cars anyone on this magazine has ever driven.
But the number to end all numbers concerning the Super Sport, the one that will stop you in your tracks and make you either laugh or cry, is this; in the same time that it takes a McLaren F1 to get from rest to 200mph, the Veyron SS can go from zero to 200mph and back again – and then do zero to 60mph as well. Think about that for a moment – and then think about it for a little while longer.
There will be just 30 Veyron Super Sports in total, each one handmade at Bugatti’s small factory in Molsheim, at the foothills near the woods of Alsace. So far Bugati has sold some 260 Veyrons since the original planned batch of 300 went on sale in 2005. Think of the Super Sport therefore as the last and final version – the best version no less – of the world’s best car.
See the test pics of the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport
What’s it like?
What’s perhaps most amazing of all about this most amazing of cars, however, is that despite its heart-wrenching, lung-bursting performance, it is also quite incredibly civilised to drive. Such was Bugatti’s desire to provide the Super Sport with a refined personality, the overall impression you get after spending a day at the wheel is indeed one of supreme luxury.
When you put your foot down and feel your internal organs squeezed to one side under the sheer g-force, there is also the unique, rather lovely sensation of sitting in your favourite armchair in your favourite lounge while doing so. And in the end it is the Veyron Super Sport’s pure breadth of ability that separates it so completely from the rest of the automotive world – the fact that it can throw you at the horizon with sufficient force to make you feel physically uncomfortable, while at the same time providing you with the sights, sounds and smells of the most luxuriant car money can buy.
By fitting bigger turbos, bigger intercoolers and improving the way it breathes, Bugatti was able to generate the extra power and torque required without trying too hard at all. What needed rather more time, effort and re-engineering skill was making sure the powertrain remained cool enough when on full reheat – as did the retuning of the chassis, suspension, braking and steering systems. And, most crucially of all, the aerodynamic package as well.
Because the Super Sport accelerates that much faster than the regular Veyron, the speed and angle at which it deploys its various wings had to be completely recalibrated – otherwise, says Bugatti, the car would have become ‘terminally unstable’ before it got anywhere near its top speed. Hence the reason the massive bi-plane wing now emerges from the redesigned rear bodywork at 180kmh and at a different speed/angle compared with the standard car, whose wing doesn’t appear until 220kmh.
You can genuinely feel the difference on the move, too. The Super Sport very obviously has more straight-line performance than before; however fast you think it might feel when you put your foot to the floor and hold it there for a few seconds, double it, add another 100 per cent and you still won’t be anywhere near. Yet despite its ability to go into hyperspace harder and faster than the standard car, the Super Sport’s extra high speed stability and, surprisingly, its superior ride comfort (afforded by a set of ultra-trick new Sachs dampers) are every bit as apparent as its extra go.
And that’s before you even mention its gearbox, which remains, in my humble opinion, the stand-out item in a car that hits quite a few peaks. The speed and smoothness with which the Super Sport shifts gear, up or down its seven ratios, is absolutely and completely extraordinary. The fact that it has 1105lb ft of torque to deal with while doing so proves, more than any other aspect of this incredible car, just how big an achievement the Veyron – Super Sport or otherwise – actually is.
Should I buy one?
As swansongs go the Veyron Super Sport will take some beating. Of the other 25 Super Sports that Bugatti will make over the next two years, just six cars remain unsold. If you fancy one, in other words, best get on the phone to the UK’s most renowned Bugatti dealer, Jack Barclay of Berkley Square, London, PDQ.
Let’s hope, no, let us pray that there’s more to come from Planet Molsheim in the months and years to come.
Bugatti Veyron Super Sport - Road Test First Drive - Autocar.co.uk
It is its breadth of ability that separates it so completely from the rest of the automotive world.
What is it?
There are all sorts of crazed statistics about the new £2m Bugatti Veyron Super Sport with which you can fray the outer edges of your imagination. Quite apart from the fact that it boasts 198bhp beyond that of the regular 987bhp Veyron and can do 268mph, when the crankshaft of this car’s 8.0-litre W16 engine is rotating at precisely 6400rpm in seventh gear, it will quaff its way through a 100-litre tank of fuel in just under eight minutes.
The W16 quad-turbo engine also develops its maximum torque figure the entire time between 3000 and 5000rpm, so there is no torque ‘peak’ as such. How much twisting power does it actually generate? How does 1105lb ft grab you? Or, to put it another way, near enough twice as much as a Noble M600 – one of the most potent cars anyone on this magazine has ever driven.
But the number to end all numbers concerning the Super Sport, the one that will stop you in your tracks and make you either laugh or cry, is this; in the same time that it takes a McLaren F1 to get from rest to 200mph, the Veyron SS can go from zero to 200mph and back again – and then do zero to 60mph as well. Think about that for a moment – and then think about it for a little while longer.
There will be just 30 Veyron Super Sports in total, each one handmade at Bugatti’s small factory in Molsheim, at the foothills near the woods of Alsace. So far Bugati has sold some 260 Veyrons since the original planned batch of 300 went on sale in 2005. Think of the Super Sport therefore as the last and final version – the best version no less – of the world’s best car.
See the test pics of the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport
What’s it like?
What’s perhaps most amazing of all about this most amazing of cars, however, is that despite its heart-wrenching, lung-bursting performance, it is also quite incredibly civilised to drive. Such was Bugatti’s desire to provide the Super Sport with a refined personality, the overall impression you get after spending a day at the wheel is indeed one of supreme luxury.
When you put your foot down and feel your internal organs squeezed to one side under the sheer g-force, there is also the unique, rather lovely sensation of sitting in your favourite armchair in your favourite lounge while doing so. And in the end it is the Veyron Super Sport’s pure breadth of ability that separates it so completely from the rest of the automotive world – the fact that it can throw you at the horizon with sufficient force to make you feel physically uncomfortable, while at the same time providing you with the sights, sounds and smells of the most luxuriant car money can buy.
By fitting bigger turbos, bigger intercoolers and improving the way it breathes, Bugatti was able to generate the extra power and torque required without trying too hard at all. What needed rather more time, effort and re-engineering skill was making sure the powertrain remained cool enough when on full reheat – as did the retuning of the chassis, suspension, braking and steering systems. And, most crucially of all, the aerodynamic package as well.
Because the Super Sport accelerates that much faster than the regular Veyron, the speed and angle at which it deploys its various wings had to be completely recalibrated – otherwise, says Bugatti, the car would have become ‘terminally unstable’ before it got anywhere near its top speed. Hence the reason the massive bi-plane wing now emerges from the redesigned rear bodywork at 180kmh and at a different speed/angle compared with the standard car, whose wing doesn’t appear until 220kmh.
You can genuinely feel the difference on the move, too. The Super Sport very obviously has more straight-line performance than before; however fast you think it might feel when you put your foot to the floor and hold it there for a few seconds, double it, add another 100 per cent and you still won’t be anywhere near. Yet despite its ability to go into hyperspace harder and faster than the standard car, the Super Sport’s extra high speed stability and, surprisingly, its superior ride comfort (afforded by a set of ultra-trick new Sachs dampers) are every bit as apparent as its extra go.
And that’s before you even mention its gearbox, which remains, in my humble opinion, the stand-out item in a car that hits quite a few peaks. The speed and smoothness with which the Super Sport shifts gear, up or down its seven ratios, is absolutely and completely extraordinary. The fact that it has 1105lb ft of torque to deal with while doing so proves, more than any other aspect of this incredible car, just how big an achievement the Veyron – Super Sport or otherwise – actually is.
Should I buy one?
As swansongs go the Veyron Super Sport will take some beating. Of the other 25 Super Sports that Bugatti will make over the next two years, just six cars remain unsold. If you fancy one, in other words, best get on the phone to the UK’s most renowned Bugatti dealer, Jack Barclay of Berkley Square, London, PDQ.
Let’s hope, no, let us pray that there’s more to come from Planet Molsheim in the months and years to come.
Bugatti Veyron Super Sport - Road Test First Drive - Autocar.co.uk
#5
10-25-2010 | 03:51 AM
Thread Starter
| TS Official Automotive Enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 3,533
Tester's Notes:
Steve Sutcliffe
What makes the Veyron SS so special?
So here are some more facts about the Veyron Super Sport with which you can amaze/disgust/enlighten/bore/inform and/or entertain your friends at the next dinner party (delete where applicable please).
When Bugatti first went to Michelin to specify tyres that would remain safe at 252mph (the regular Veyron’s official top speed), Michelin said it could produce a special tyre that could be fitted if and when owners wanted to have a crack at the top speed.
But Bugatti insisted that Michelin come up with a set of tyres that could be used 365 days a year and still be good for 252mph – and so at great expense Michelin came up with the perfect tyre. Since then, just 13 owners have actually done over 250mph in their cars, meaning that the other 245 Veyrons out there are fitted with tyres that are massively over-engineered. And that’s just the way Bugatti wanted it.
The tolerances for the exterior panel gaps on the Veyron SS are plus or minus two tenths of one milimetre; virtually zero in other words. This is at the specific request of VW’s uber-Field Marshall-in-chief, Ferdinand Piech, who apparently has a bit of a thing about panel gaps.
To achieve the perfect finish of the painted carbon bodywork, Bugatti applies seven layers of dyed resin above the carbon. And the weave itself has to be perfectly matched across the various exterior panel gaps, otherwise it is thrown away and they start all over again. The cost? A further 200,000 euros above and beyond the basic 1.65m euro asking price, which of course doesn’t include VAT.
At full chat the W16 engine ingests some four tones of air per hour. That’s enough to keep the average human being alive for 40 days and 40 nights.
To find a sensor efficient enough to monitor the car’s acceleration and then deploy its various wings at precisely the right moment, Bugatti investigated sonar technology but it wasn’t accurate enough. Then they asked NASA for assistance and that didn’t work either, again because the sensors used by the North American Space Association weren’t quite accurate enough.
In the end Bugatti found a solution within the agriculture industry, and went with a gyro sensor used by the most cutting edge combine harvesters. It’s a sensor that allows combines to harvest in perfectly straight lines over very long distances, and without it the SuperSport would not be able to achieve its top speed.
A set of wheels on this car costs 50,000 euros, and they must be changed – as in thrown away and be replaced by brand new wheels – every third tyre cycle. Which equates to approximately 16,000km.
The dashboard is created by using one single piece of aluminium, which stretches right from one side of the car to the other and runs from the base of the windscreen to the console that surrounds the gearlever. Cost? Another 20,000 euros – kerching.
Bugatti knows where every single Veyron is and how fast it is travelling at any given moment by using a complex GPS data logging system back at the factory. It runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and is intended to be the world’s most sophisticated anti-theft system. Except for just one car, whose owner asked to be removed from the grid due to privacy reasons.
In Handling Mode – whereby the wings are fully extended – the Veyron SS produces around 350kg of downforce, split roughly 100kg over the front axle and 250kg over the rear. With the second key in the ignition and in Top Speed mode, which prevents the main wings from deploying and increases the top speed from 235mph to 257mph, it produces just 50kg of downforce, split 10kg front, 40kg rear. Which gives you an idea how much less stable it must be right at the very top end.
The standing quarter mile time is 9.7sec. And despite weighing some 1838kg (50kg less than the regular version) it can stop in just 31.4m from 62mph. To go from 0-100-0mph takes 9.2sec. And that, my friends, is raving ridiculous.
What makes the Veyron SS so special? - Tester
Steve Sutcliffe
What makes the Veyron SS so special?
So here are some more facts about the Veyron Super Sport with which you can amaze/disgust/enlighten/bore/inform and/or entertain your friends at the next dinner party (delete where applicable please).
When Bugatti first went to Michelin to specify tyres that would remain safe at 252mph (the regular Veyron’s official top speed), Michelin said it could produce a special tyre that could be fitted if and when owners wanted to have a crack at the top speed.
But Bugatti insisted that Michelin come up with a set of tyres that could be used 365 days a year and still be good for 252mph – and so at great expense Michelin came up with the perfect tyre. Since then, just 13 owners have actually done over 250mph in their cars, meaning that the other 245 Veyrons out there are fitted with tyres that are massively over-engineered. And that’s just the way Bugatti wanted it.
The tolerances for the exterior panel gaps on the Veyron SS are plus or minus two tenths of one milimetre; virtually zero in other words. This is at the specific request of VW’s uber-Field Marshall-in-chief, Ferdinand Piech, who apparently has a bit of a thing about panel gaps.
To achieve the perfect finish of the painted carbon bodywork, Bugatti applies seven layers of dyed resin above the carbon. And the weave itself has to be perfectly matched across the various exterior panel gaps, otherwise it is thrown away and they start all over again. The cost? A further 200,000 euros above and beyond the basic 1.65m euro asking price, which of course doesn’t include VAT.
At full chat the W16 engine ingests some four tones of air per hour. That’s enough to keep the average human being alive for 40 days and 40 nights.
To find a sensor efficient enough to monitor the car’s acceleration and then deploy its various wings at precisely the right moment, Bugatti investigated sonar technology but it wasn’t accurate enough. Then they asked NASA for assistance and that didn’t work either, again because the sensors used by the North American Space Association weren’t quite accurate enough.
In the end Bugatti found a solution within the agriculture industry, and went with a gyro sensor used by the most cutting edge combine harvesters. It’s a sensor that allows combines to harvest in perfectly straight lines over very long distances, and without it the SuperSport would not be able to achieve its top speed.
A set of wheels on this car costs 50,000 euros, and they must be changed – as in thrown away and be replaced by brand new wheels – every third tyre cycle. Which equates to approximately 16,000km.
The dashboard is created by using one single piece of aluminium, which stretches right from one side of the car to the other and runs from the base of the windscreen to the console that surrounds the gearlever. Cost? Another 20,000 euros – kerching.
Bugatti knows where every single Veyron is and how fast it is travelling at any given moment by using a complex GPS data logging system back at the factory. It runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and is intended to be the world’s most sophisticated anti-theft system. Except for just one car, whose owner asked to be removed from the grid due to privacy reasons.
In Handling Mode – whereby the wings are fully extended – the Veyron SS produces around 350kg of downforce, split roughly 100kg over the front axle and 250kg over the rear. With the second key in the ignition and in Top Speed mode, which prevents the main wings from deploying and increases the top speed from 235mph to 257mph, it produces just 50kg of downforce, split 10kg front, 40kg rear. Which gives you an idea how much less stable it must be right at the very top end.
The standing quarter mile time is 9.7sec. And despite weighing some 1838kg (50kg less than the regular version) it can stop in just 31.4m from 62mph. To go from 0-100-0mph takes 9.2sec. And that, my friends, is raving ridiculous.
What makes the Veyron SS so special? - Tester
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