BUGATTI

I was watching vh1 last night and on the fab 40 was bugatti at no.2! Yep the 2nd most expensive thing in the world for 2006.Its a beauty!


Bugatti is a superlative on wheels


At its top speed of 407 km/h, the $1.25 million Bugatti Veyron runs out of fuel in 12 minutes. Deliveries start this
month, and plans are to build no more than 300 of them.


Jan. 21, 2006. 01:00 AM

PALERMO, ITALY—At 320 km/h, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 pounds a beautiful, howling hole in the sweltering haze hanging over the motorway.
This, the fastest production car in the world, is broad and low, an enamelled ellipse in a spiffy two-tone paint scheme. By comparison, its now-vanquished supercar rivals, such as the Ferrari Enzo and McLaren F1, are all edges and blades and angles, like F16 fighter planes or Japanese stunt kites.

A superlative on four wheels, the Bugatti Veyron is not only the world's fastest production car but also the most expensive: $1.25 million (U.S.) before taxes and richly deserved gas-guzzler penalties. Also, the most powerful: Its 8.0-litre, 16-cylinder, quad-turbo engine produces more than 1,000 horsepower and churns it through a high-tech all-wheel-drive system and foot-wide tires.
It's also the quickest: The Veyron accelerates to 96 km/h in 2.1 seconds, faster than a Formula 1 car, but then it's just getting started. In 20 seconds — about the time it takes a fast reader to get through this paragraph — it reaches 320 km/h. In 53 mind-blowing seconds, the Veyron reaches its marquee speed: 407 km/h.
At that speed, the tires would begin to soften in about half an hour. Fortunately, at top speed, it runs out of gas in only 12 minutes. "It's a safety feature,'' Wolfgang Schreiber, the Veyron's chief engineer, says with a smile.
The Veyron, which makes its way to the first customers this month, is many things: It's a mirror held to the automobile industry's near-past of irrational exuberance. It's a monument to the ego of Ferdinand Piech, former chairman of Volkswagen AG, which bought the Bugatti name in 1998. And it represents a defining moment in the history of the automobile, the likely pinnacle of production car cost and performance.
Six years and an estimated half-billion in the making, the car trades on one of the most famous names in motoring.

Dan Neil is the Pulitzer prize-winning automotive critic of the Los Angeles Times.