Driving a Bugatti Veyron is like carrying a 14.6-foot-long open wallet that is spewing 50-dollar bills. Drivers rush up from behind, tailgating before swerving into either of the Veyron’s rear-three-quarter blind spots, where they hang ape-like out of windows to snap photos with their cell phones. They won’t leave, either, because they know the Bugatti, averaging 11 mpg, can’t go far without refueling and that its driver will soon need to take a minute to compose himself. And when you open the Veyron’s door to exit—a gymnastic feat that requires grabbing one of your own ankles to drag it across that huge, hot sill—you will be greeted by 5 to 15 persons wielding cameras and asking questions. If you’re wearing shorts or a skirt, here’s a tip: Wear underwear.

Describing hyperbole with hyperbole is not a useful pursuit. In the Veyron’s case, the facts are sufficient. Let us look at a few:

It takes five weeks to build each car. Counting the heater core, the Veyron has 12 radiators. Sixty mph is yours in 2.5 seconds. The Bug will reach 150 mph 8.3 seconds sooner than a Nissan GT-R. At its top speed of 253 mph [as tested by C/D, November 2005], it is traveling 371 feet per second and will empty its 26.4-gallon tank in 19 minutes. If you can’t locate fuel of 93 octane or higher, your dealer must detune the engine. Service, in general, will be expensive because it takes two persons—one of whom won’t be you—to remove the rear bodywork just to get at the engine. Four of this car’s Michelin PAX Pilots will set you back $25,000. If they’re mounted on wheels—a process undertaken only in France—well, that’s $70,000. The hydraulic rams that raise the rear wing at 137 mph are identical to those that raise flaps on aircraft. During the Veyron’s prototype days, a bird crashed through its aluminum grille—the car was humming along at 205 mph—so now the grille is titanium. The windows automatically rise and lock in place at 93 mph so your dog doesn’t lose his tongue. You thought the engine made 1001 horsepower? Nope. “They all make more than 1010,” says Bugatti’s Jens Schulenburg, who works in the “Gesamtfahrzeugentwicklung” department.

Over Labor Day weekend, we drove the Veyron to the 5000-car Kruse Auction in Auburn, Indiana, where it could repose amongst other supercars and elicit reactions from enthusiasts whose wallets were as wide as the Bugatti’s doorsills. We parked next to a racing-blue 1948 Talbot-Lago. A French car next to a French car. But the Bugatti killed all interest in the magnificent Talbot, making us feel sorry for its owner. So we parked in a line of a dozen Lamborghinis. This lasted 15 minutes before the Lambo salesman began looking ill. “We’re trying to sell here,” he pleaded. “You’re killing us.”

All persons who stumble upon a Veyron are moved to speak:

“I’ll bet that car has more moves than a monkey on 18 feet of grapevine,” said one.

“If that’s your car,” said a blonde, “I’ll marry you.”

“That thing’ll rip your nuts off,” opined a teenager with numerous facial piercings.

“It’s like a good movie,” said another. “Contains violence, obscenity, possible nudity.” (We’re not sure what that meant.)

“I do believe this is the most beautiful car I have ever seen,” said a Southern belle who’d driven to Auburn in her Ford GT.

They ask questions, too. Mostly, “What happens when you flatten the accelerator pedal?” Here’s the best we can explain it. From rest, the car leaves civilly, gentlemanly, with almost no wheelspin or tire squeal. It accelerates briskly for roughly one second, until the turbos understand that you mean business. Then there is a deafening roar, the nose lifts, and the car feels as if it’s making a serious attempt to claw itself into the air. The first time you’re about three seconds into this experiment, you, too, will lift. For one thing, you’ll be close to rear-ending a family in a Ford Explorer. For another, you’ll need a moment to recalibrate what you’ve hitherto considered cheek-rippling forward thrust. Analogies, here, are often futile, but in the time it takes a thundering Audi S8 to attain 60 mph, the Veyron will be going 100.

The somewhat disappointing news is that despite accurate, nicely weighted steering and 1.00 g of skidpad grip, the car isn’t particularly nimble in the hills, where it is taxed by its 4486-pound heft. It feels more like a Benz SL63 AMG than, say, a BMW M3.

The Veyron’s weird shifter, which we named Klaatu, is as alien as the rest of the car. Push down for park. Push once to the right for drive. Twice to the right for sport mode. Left for neutral. Left and down for reverse. No matter where you shove it, it instantly returns to its original position, à la BMW turn signals. This is annoying, but resist the urge to abuse any gears. A new transmission costs $123,200. Speaking of abuse, within the 366-page hardcover owner’s manual, there are 190 boxed messages headlined “WARNING!”

There are manumatic paddles on the steering wheel. You won’t be using them. Under full throttle, the car catapults through its seven gears so quickly that you can’t keep up, and manual shifting would require you to study the tach, which would mean you’re not watching the road. In a car that can attain 100 mph in 462 feet—and is 20 mph faster through the quarter-mile than a Porsche 911 Turbo—that would be insane.

At the Kruse auction, the Bugatti caused knots of the 175,000 attendees to become overstimulated. “I’d buy one,” said a man in a Shelby T-shirt who shoved a child aside to get closer, “but it’s too big a hassle.”

“You should see this car on YouTube,” yelled a teen. “It goes to 60 in, like, 2.5 seconds.” We told him we’d performed the same test and had driven the car for five days. “No, really,” he insisted, “you can, watch a guy drive this car on YouTube.”

“This thing is so visible and so memorable,” said a 30-something bodybuilder, “that it would make it hard to cheat on my wife.”

A 60-year-old woman became hysterical. “It looks like the devil,” she squealed. “I am going to buy one.” This was no idle threat. She showed us a photo of a Hispano-Suiza parked in her garage in Madrid.

Like all masterpieces, the Veyron evinces an off-kilter brush stroke or two. For starters, even at the most forgiving of its three ride heights (4.9 inches), it hates curbs, speed bumps, automatic carwashes, and dead animals, which it scoops up as if performing community service. It has the turning radius (39.3 feet) of a Navy minesweeper. There is no 12-volt outlet, so you’ll want to own a battery-powered radar detector. And the carbon-fiber sport seats are adjusted manually. To raise or lower their height, in fact, they must be removed. By the dealer.

What’s more, the Veyron proffers the ride of a Mitsubishi Evo that has been modified for professional drifting. Step-off is unpredictable and sometimes abrupt, accompanied by a not-so-charming clunk from the gearbox. And the W-16’s numerous fans, its 64 valves, and its four furiously spinning turbos create an engine note that sounds like an idling Blackhawk helicopter’s. It whooshes, whirs, and whines. No crisp crackling of pistons, as from a Ferrari or a Lamborghini.

Combine that with tires as pliable as mahogany—they must, after all, withstand 253 mph—and you summon the full panoply of noises that luxocar engineers work so diligently to eradicate: tire thrum, boom, crash-through, tread roar, impact echo, and blasts from expansion strips that sound like the guns of Navarone. At a 70-mph cruise, the Veyron is 8 dB noisier than a Porsche 911 GT2. At full throttle, it is 6 dB noisier than a track-ready Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR. It’s like living inside a snare drum. Those of us who sampled the radio said it wasn’t very good, but it was hard to tell. We couldn’t really hear it.

Three hundred Veyrons will be built, with 240 sold so far. To secure your copy, hand a $420,000 deposit to one of 11 U.S. Bugatti dealers. Because this is the only car in America whose Monroney is quoted in euros, it is wise to stroll into the showroom on a day when the dollar is peppy. Like maybe next year. The Veyron’s destination charge—the car is shipped via Air France—amounts to $100,000. Then there’s the $7700 guzzler tax. Still, no two are exactly alike. One buyer spent an extra $72,500 on custom leather. To date, all buyers have been male, apart from the wife of VW board chairman Ferdinand Piech.

Like the McLaren F1 and Porsche Carrera GT before it, the Veyron is its own ticker-tape parade. It has its own cult. It is its own Tilt-A-Whirl. It causes low-grade dementia, motor disturbances, erratic behavior, and incontinence. It is as politically incorrect as a Boeing business jet. Apart from Bordeaux, Bardot, and some tasty snails, it may be the best thing ever to come from France.

STEVE SPENCE

I’ve seen this acceleration described as “surreal.” Now I know why: It’s a driving experience of such astounding accelerative force, probably how those test pilots in the 1950s must have felt, strapped into those explosive jet-rail accelerators out in the desert. It’s so fast I couldn’t manage even to glance at the speedo: Going from 70 to 120 comes in a blink, but you don’t look anywhere but at the road, a NASA-like thrum in your head. And I didn’t even have my foot in it, really

MARK GILLIES

My son Cameron loved the Veyron. I just admired it: the gorgeous interior, the imposing presence, the terrific steering, and the absolutely astonishing performance. But I didn’t fall for it in the way I did the Ferrari F40 or the McLaren F1. It isn’t as visceral as those cars, and its sheer complexity offends my belief that the best engineering solution is the simplest one. And I still can’t believe that for the price of one Veyron, you can get eight Ferrari F430s—or a grid of vintage race cars.

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