We don't know if the U.S. TV game show Jeopardy has a German adaptation, but Volkswagen's VW Auto Group seems to have provided a number of answers to questions that would bedevil the average contestant on that show—not to mention seasoned automotive journalists. British auto journalist and BBC “Top Gear” presenter Jeremy Clarkson was once heard to quip, “To what question is the answer a £68,000 Volkswagen?” when describing the ultra-luxurious and equally ultra-expensive Phaeton.
In the case of the Bugatti Veryon supercar, we might frame Clarkson's plaint this way: “To what question is the answer: Build a car whose top speed would make an ordinary car airborne, whose engine requires a cooling system with 10 radiators, and whose braking system ought to be installed in the deck of an aircraft carrier to bring incoming aircraft to a dead stop in seconds?”
The Veyron—née the Bugatti EB18/4 “Veyron” when it made its début in concept-car form at the 1999 Tokyo Auto Show—was designed by Volkswagen's Harmut Warkuss as the latest in a number of concept cars which were built to highlight the then-recent purchase of the Bugatti name by VW. Development continued throughout the early 2000s; by 2001, the “EB 16/4 Veyron” had been promoted to something called an “advanced concept,” which was a thinly-veiled hint at things to come—the concept dream was about to become a reality. Volkswagen's chairman at the time, Ferdinand Piëch, announced at the 2001 Geneva Motor Show that because there had been so much interest generated by the Veyron concept, VW would undertake the task of actually building the car, which Piëch heralded with superlative after superlative: fastest, most powerful (1001 hp!)... oh, and did we mention, most expensive car in history? Tall orders to fill, but the engineering department had to jump through more hoops, because the basic shape of the concept had to be followed. Early prototypes had issues with speed and handling, resulting in some noteworthy crashes. The new VW chairman, Bernd Pischetsrieder, took over, and many thought he would kill the Veyron, but keep the technological advances made by the Veryon engineers for use in other VW group cars. Instead, he told them to go back to the drawing board and redesign the various subsystems that were causing problems. Cooling issues were solved with the addition of 10 radiators, as well as keeping the top of the engine uncovered. Originally Audi's DSG gearbox was to be used, but Audi didn't have one capable enough of handling the engine's massive horsepower, so it commissioned the British company Ricardo to design a 7-speed sequential-shift transmission for the Veyron. Extensive testing was done to ensure stability at over 200-mph speeds; the ground clearance was lowered to 8.9 cm, for instance. Engineers also instituted a special key that had to be turned if the driver wanted to go into top-speed mode—anything between 234 mph and the top speed of 253 mph. This engineering marvel was finally unveiled for public consumption at the Los Angeles Auto Show in January of 2006, although it was rumored that a month before that, at the Dubai Motor Show in December, 2005, six cars were sold, including the demonstration models. Very impressive, when you consider that the car sells for over $1.4 million (it can be purchased at select Bentley dealers). If you can afford that, you can deal with the gas mileage, which is EPA rated at 8 mpg city, 15 mpg highway by the EPA. Should you manage to find a place in the world to test its top speed, the fuel un-economy will drop to 2.1 mpg at top speed, and the car will run out of gas in 12 minutes (although it's more likely you will run out of unobstructed road in that time). Paying the gas-guzzler tax seems a small price to pay when you consider the time and money put into designing this engineering marvel!
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