What it's like to drive a
$1.4-million car

BY MARK PHELAN
FREE PRESS AUTO
CRITIC
$1.4 million. 1,001 Horsepower. Leather from cattle raised in special
high-altitude pastures.
The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport roadster is less a car than a visit to an
alternative reality.
The 16-cylinder engine produces more power than a small tugboat. It could
push a barge of rice up the Mississippi, except the Veyron would exhaust its
26.4-gallon gas tank in about 7 minutes at wide-open throttle.
It's a frighteningly fast car, but as easy to drive as a Ford Taurus and one
that justifies its existence both by testing new technologies for the Volkswagen
Group and by generating a waiting list of orders -- complete with deposit --
that have the factory fully booked for more than a year.
I drove a Grand Sport around northern Oakland County for a couple of hours
Wednesday as the car stopped in Detroit for a day on its inaugural U.S.
tour.
Bugatti has delivered 200 Veyron 16.4 coupes since production began in late
2005. The total model run is capped at 300. Bugatti has orders -- with deposits
taken --for another 50. It takes about a month to build a Veyron in Bugatti's
factory in Molsheim, France.
The Grand Sport roadster is new for 2009, part of Bugatti's 100th
anniversary.
Bugatti will build 150 Grand Sports, which are nearly identical to the coupe
except for a removable targa top.
The Grand Sports are reserved for Bugatti customers who are coming back for
seconds.
One potential buyer stopped by Bugatti of Troy -- part of the Suburban
Collection -- to take a Grand Sport out for a spin Wednesday morning.
That anonymous high-roller was treated to four turbochargers that whistle
like a taxiing Boeing 747 and creamy leather on virtually every surface. Bugatti
buys leather from cattle raised in Austrian Alpine meadows, above the elevation
where mosquitoes, wasps and other biting insects live.
Bug bites on cows, you see, can lead to blemishes on leather. Bugatti doesn't
do blemishes.
It does help VW move technologies from the race track and the luxury rack to
the company's mainstream brands. The Veyron's seven-speed dual-clutch
transmission is both seamlessly smooth and closely related to the racing
gearboxes VW's Audi brand used to dominate the 24 Hours of Le Mans race. The
stability control system may be the only one in the world that has been tested
to make sure it keeps the car safe and stable at 186 miles an hour.
The Veyron accelerates to 62 m.p.h. in 2.5 seconds, and its massive
carbon-ceramic brakes bring it back to a standstill in just 2.3.
The top speed is 253 m.p.h. Small problems can become fatal failures very
quickly at that speed, so Bugatti's sales contract warns owners their car will
arrive with up to 310 miles on the odometer.
Every car gets a test-drive of at least 220 miles to check every system.
Bugatti wraps the cars in plastic to protect the paint and replaces the wheels
and tires before the car goes to its owner.
So really, it's $1.4 million for a lightly used car. With no cup holders,
incidentally.