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Bugatti Veyron Super Sport

THEY THINK IT'S ALL OVERKILL (some text hidden) --NONE--

By Jonathan Crouch

Just when you thought the Veyron had written the book on automotive superlatives, the Super Sport model arrives to recalibrate your concept of speed. Jonathan Crouch reports

Ten Second Reviewword count: 54

Just when you thought that nothing could possibly kick sand in the face of the Bugatti Veyron, along comes the £1.4m Veyron Super Sport, a car that makes the original Veyron feel as if it's deployed a drogue chute. This 1184bhp projectile is electronically limited to 258mph and rewrites the rule book on rapid.

Backgroundword count: 150

The Bugatti factory, tucked away on an unprepossessing factory estate on the outskirts of Molsheim a few miles west of Strasbourg, seems an unlikely place to come in search of ultimates. Perhaps when you build the undisputed king of performance cars you don't need to shout too loudly about it. Grand homme syndrome, if you will. Since 2005, this little factory, which could be mistaken for a double-glazing fabricator at first glimpse, has built nearly 300 Veyrons and has lost, at a conservative estimate, around £4,000,000 on every car. While this sounds the sort of business operation I could have fronted, couple that with the global economic meltdown and it hardly sounds the footing to launch an even more extreme, massively more expensive model. Yet that's exactly what Bugatti has done and the result is the astonishing Super Sport. Think of it as Bugatti's farewell tribute to the Veyron line.

Driving Experienceword count: 212

The Veyron Super Sport is a car that tends to be defined by statistics. It packs 1184bhp and its tyres are rated to an electronically limited 258mph. In the time it takes a McLaren F1 to accelerate from standstill to 200mph, the Veyron Super Sport gets to 200mph, back to nought and then up to 60mph again. Its torque figure of 1,100lb/ft is almost triple that of a Ferrari 458 Italia, by most measures a psychotically rapid car. Chat to Bugatti's personable PR people and these facts appear never ending. You'll empty the 100-litre tank of fuel in less than eight minutes when travelling at maximum velocity. As brain-warping as these facts are, the Veyron's real genius lies in the fact that it can keep pace with an F1 car in a straight line but is nevertheless as docile as a Golf GTI. The seven-speed DSG twin-clutch gearbox slurs between the gears effortlessly and the bespoke Sachs dampers give the Veyron Super Sport a ride quality not far removed from a Bentley Conti GT. The sound track of the Super Sport is something very different, however, with an absolute cacophony of engine exhaust, wind and tyre noise overlaid with a Wagnerian induction roar and whipcracks from the turbochargers as the throttle closes.

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Category: Sporting Cars

Performance
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Handling
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Comfort
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This is an excerpt from our full review.
To access the full content library please contact us on 0330 0020 227 or click here

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