There are cars. And there is the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport. Srinivas Krishnan drives it
I did something in a Rs 16-crore Bugatti Veyron that perhaps not many people on this planet have done. No, it’s not the acclaimed 407 kph top speed run. Nor is it decelerating from that mind-numbing 407 kph to zero in just 10 seconds. No, I did not demolish the quarter-mile drag in 9.8 seconds. Nor did I do what F1 cars do — touch the century mark in 2.5 seconds.
So what unique thing did I do in a Bugatti Veyron (Grand Sport or even the bog-standard spec) that not even a microscopic fraction of the seven billion people on this planet would have done? No, it’s not what you think either.
What I did was... honk!
After my drive was done and we were back at the Bugatti facility (that looks more like an exclusive golf resort rather than a factory), I just had to do it. Now it could have been the Indian in me or it could have been a natural curiosity as to how a Veyron horn sounds. Whatever it was, I had to do it. It was not important how it sounded (to be frank, it was like any other umptimillion Volkswagen Group models!), but the effort involved in honking was unusual — for the first time, I needed to use extra muscles to depress that central steering boss.
And why was that? Here is the revelation: “If it were light and easy, the horn would activate itself every time you accelerated or decelerated hard, that’s why.”
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Amazing how an innocuous action triggered yet another jaw-dropping factoid about this magnificent automobile. The answer came from a man who accompanied me on the drive. His name was Pierre-Henri Raphanel and his Bugatti visiting card said ‘Pilote officiel’. Uh-huh. At least he looked the part — tall, rugged and handsome. Did Bugatti hire him on his looks alone? I don’t think so, because not too long ago (July 4, 2010 to be precise), Pierre took the Veyron Super Sport to its top speed of 431.072 kph, making it the fastest production car in the world. And here he was, indulging an Indian who wanted to press the horn button of the fastest convertible/roadster in the world!
The thing about the Veyron is that it’s like the Taj Mahal. It’s all over the place and has already attained a mythical halo around it. You read all sorts of reports about it and you’ve seen its images so many times that you’re left jaded. There is so much hype surrounding the Veyron and the surreal statistics that accompany it that your vision gets clouded; the hype refracts the way you look at it. But a single session behind the wheel is enough to see it in the pure light of experience — a drive in the Veyron opens your eyes. As Salman Rushdie writes about the Taj Mahal, “(It) made all my notions about its devaluation feel totally and completely redundant.” So, if all this while, the VW and Bugatti PR machinery have been telling you that it’s a technological tour de force, now I take them seriously.
And why is that? Take for example what Pierre demonstrated before handing over the car to me: he took the Grand Sport to the top seventh gear quickly. By then, we were doing some stunning three-digit speeds on those narrow Alsatian roads cluttered with unsuspecting drivers. Then he shifted down to first. No, really.
We were still going very, very fast. If it were any other car, can you imagine what would have happened? The engine would have had an apoplectic fit and seized, sending no less than 64 valves into the stratosphere, while the gears would have ground themselves into alloy shavings. But in the Veyron, there was not even a blip as it dropped down six cogs in milliseconds. If that’s not an automotive marvel, I don’t know what is.
Oh, of course there is the unparalleled feeling of unprecedented speed. I have been in very, very fast cars. Most of them pin your head to the neck restraint. In the Veyron, with the official pilot demonstrating its ability to beat the laws of gravity-inertia-motion-physics-whatever, my head and body were of course pinned, but gently my thighs and legs became weightless as my legs were nearly lifted. For experiencing that sort of force, you need to be in a Formula 1 car or take the Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo. Or hitch a ride on a Veyron Super Sport with monsieur Raphanel behind the wheel.
Okay, enough already. Allow me to tick one more item off my checklist of things to do before I, er, retire. Making myself comfortable in the driver’s seat, I engaged the paddles and set off. There was a whoosh emerging from the back as I gathered some revs. The roads were narrow, so I had to wait for my chance to do what one’s supposed to do with a car like this. Here was an automobile that had every reason to be cantankerous and misbehave on the road — after all, it’s not a mere supercar, it’s a hypercar. But here I was, yakking with Pierre about the gut-wrenching acceleration of a Gallardo, all the while manoeuvring roundabouts as if I were in a Passat or something. What flexibility! What everyday usability! I could drive this car to work daily back home in Mumbai and I am sure this automotive Taj Mahal would be up to it. The steering feedback was just right, the prodigious output was offered in measured doses and the four-wheel drive setup ensured that it never stepped out of line.
Finally, the highway hove into view and it was time to make that quad-turbo 7993cc W16 work for a living. Depress the pedal and the whoosh behind acquires a cyclone-like spirit, while the turbos put together a whistling philharmonic presentation and the Veyron Grand Sport brings the horizon closer at a frightening pace. I barely had time to see the speedo; all I knew was that the white van that was far, far away when I started was now behind me. One more time. I came down to a complete crawl and waited for the traffic in front to disappear. Depress the pedal again and this time, there were no half-hearted measures.
The engine noise exploded behind me in a frenzy and it felt as if a 737 was hovering behind as the pretty Alsatian countryside started disappearing backwards in fast-forward mode. I was doing 250-kph plus while Pierre was giving me some Bugatti spiel over all that noise. Now perhaps is a good time to give some of it myself, even if you’ve heard it all before: at those speeds, merely one-fourth of the Veyron’s 987 bhp is put to good use. In other words, there was still a Murcielago-worth of horsepower waiting to be tapped. And I thought I was going fast. Of the 125-plus kgm of turning force that’s available between 2200 and 5500 rpm, 74 kgm is ready at as low as 1000 rpm. Ooh, I am already fantasising having such instant access to torque on Mumbai’s densely packed Elphinstone Bridge.
Speaking of which, I needed to rein it all in, as going any faster on those roads would have been unsafe. Time to pull out another surprise from the Bugatti Veyron Box Of Miracles. Touch the brake pedal at those speeds and coming to the aid of those high-tech carbon-ceramic brakes was the rear spoiler that altered its angle sharply and quickly to behave like an air brake, not unlike the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLRs of yore. The brakes, by the way, haul the Veyron from 100 kph to zero in 2.3 seconds. Yes, the Veyron is actually quicker to stop than to accelerate. I don’t know how Ettore Bugatti would have taken it. That’s because he was reported to have replied to a customer who was (unfairly) complaining about the lack of braking in his Bugatti, that “My cars are built to go fast, not to stop.”
Well, it was time for me to stop and the half-hour that I had with this magnificent automobile was up in what felt like no time. Turning off the highway, I made my way back to the Bugatti factory in Molsheim in crawl-mode, all the way whining to Pierre about how time passes so fast in an ultra-fast car. What sort of car is this anyway? It can be angelic or demonic and it can switch between these two personalities with a mere dab of the accelerator pedal.
Whatever it may be, it is truly an engineering marvel, not just an automotive engineering marvel. Ettore Bugatti would be happy.
(The writer was invited by Bugatti to drive the Veyron Grand Sport inFrance)
