The Bugatti Veyron as a Symbol of All Conquering Success

By Jim Hamel

Jim Hamel

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I am now the editor for one of High Gear Media's newest and most exciting sites called "InsiderCarReviews.com." I road test brand new vehicles each... More

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The Bugatti Veyron embodies male pig-headedness in an automobile that is less a transportation implement and more an engineering tour de force. The Veyron was the brainchild of Ferdinand Piech (a man who at the time was chairman of the VW Group, which owns Bugatti) and was essentially an ego driven halo model that met with huge engineering obstacles.

You see, it is relatively easy to get a vehicle to go 100 miles per hour. But when you want to go 253 miles per hour with each passing MPH marker the power put out by the engine must grow exponentially. What came of this bizarre need to ever drive at airplane speed was a vehicle that pumps out 1,010 horsepower via a 8 liter 16 cylinder engine with four turbochargers and a whopping 10 radiators that help keep this monster of an engine cool. If the engine in the Bugatti Veyron was a lizard, it would be attacking Tokyo and fighting off Mothra right now.

The fact that all of the mechanical complexity in the Veyron works together so seamlessly yet it is still a vehicle that most anyone could easily drive really is a testament to the engineers who worked on it. If you have ever had the pleasure of driving a supercar like a Dodge Viper or most any old Lamborghini you will realize how rare it is to find a supercar that doesn't cause sweaty palmed palpitations when you lay out all the power.

Not that the Bugatti Veyron is Mr. Nice Supercar. At top speed this vehicle runs out of gas in 16 minutes at which point it is traveling only 3 miles per gallon of gas. The Veyron is also a vehicle very much of its own time. Do you think the powers that be at VW would have spent all this money on a project that will never make money in this economy? How a car that costs well over $1. 5 million dollars will never turn a profit is beyond me, however.

Now to the super-rich and super-famous men who are deemed lucky enough to own one of the few hundred Bugatti Veyrons scheduled for production this car truly is an unequivocal statement about their all conquering success. You see, rich men (unless they are rappers) generally don't wear diamond encrusted necklaces worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or any similarly priced visual accessory.

For the super elite upper percentile male this Bugatti is their most stylish accessory. Just ask Simon Cowell from American Idol - he wears simple jeans and a T-Shirt yet drives all over Los Angeles in a Veyron. I wonder if he knows that the first service on his Veyron costs about $18,000? So much for pre-paid maintenance.