NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Volkswagen's latest product probably won't be very good on gas and it has a rather high price tag. But that hasn't stopped a handful of people from putting down payments on the car before production started earlier this month.Posted on 09/16/2005 10:33:21 AM PDT by blueberry12
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Volkswagen's latest product probably won't be very good on gas and it has a rather high price tag. But that hasn't stopped a handful of people from putting down payments on the car before production started earlier this month.
Each Bugatti Veyron 16.4 will cost an estimated $1.24 million, according to media reports. For that, buyers will get an all-wheel-drive two-seat sports car with a lightweight carbon-fiber body and 16-cylinder engine capable of producing 1,001 horsepower.
VW purchased the Bugatti name in 1998, according to a report in the industry newspaper Automotive News Europe, and introduced a concept version of the Veyron at the Tokyo auto show the following year.
It has taken the intervening six years to perfect the car, according to the Automotive News report and others, and there had been doubts that the car would ever actually be sold. In a 2003 public debut at Laguna Seca Raceway, a prototype Veyron spun out of control.
In 2003, according to Automotive News, the car still suffered from two major problems: The enormous engine tended to overheat and the car, capable of top a speed of well in excess of 200 miles per hour, was unstable at high speeds. Several reports have placed the car's top speed at about 250 miles per hour.
The Bugatti name originated with a company that built high-performance cars from 1910 to 1956. Bugatti now operates in the same Alsace region, now part of France, in which the original Bugattis were made.
The company announced that it will build a four-door version of the car in the future, according to a report on Edmunds.com's Inside Line Website.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Now that's some serious Farhvergnugen.
Sweet ride...
This thing is an environmental menace. I predict Germany will be destroyed by a hurricane.
Dang! More HP than NASCAR. Of course there are eight extra cylinders, but still. Dang! Anybody got $1.24 mill you can spot me til payday.
and they put only 190hp in my vw passat?
That top speed (250mph) is so fast you can't even see the speed limit signs. :-))
But not more than a Top Fuel Dragsters 6,000+ horsepower. And it also only has 8 cylinders.
You'd think that the Bugatti's would be less selfish and share :)
heck yes. i can barely get up to speed on the onramp. i need at least 60hp more.
Now that is a VW Bug worth parking next to my 2002 Beetle (BUG), but it still doesn't rise to the level of the schwimwagon.
Nice ride however that flimsy wing on the rear and those louvers on the side of the rear window look like cheap after market bolt ons. For a million + I would expect something a little more refined.
Did they use some kind of sci-fi random name generator? Like the one that VW is already using?
On a side note, back in the 60's the futuristic artist's conceptions always showed everyone driving cars that looked like this. My car doesn't look like this!
finally, something useful from france.
Goes faster then a NASCAR ride too, but it sounds like they need to work on their aero package. Unstable at high speeds is not good when the thing will keep up with an Indy car.
Reminds me of the old story about someone complaining to Bugatti about the brakes on his cars. He answered that he made cars to run, not to stop. Now that would probably set the legal vultures to circling every car he made.
I like the look, too.
... that are size of buckets.
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