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Million-Dollar Baby: World’s Most Expensive Car
VW Will Start Selling Costly Bugatti in the U.S.; Zero to 62 in 2.5 Seconds
By STEPHEN POWER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 14, 2005; Page D1
After seven years of false starts, a $1 million car billed as the world’s fastest factory-produced automobile is about to arrive on American shores. Volkswagen AG is launching early next year the Bugatti Veyron, a curvaceous two-seater with air-intake scoops and a large radiator grille that prominently displays the Bugatti badge. For the German car maker, it represents an unusual bet on the high-end market at a time of cost cutting for the company and as U.S. car makers continue to struggle with slow sales.
The Bugatti Veyron boasts a massive, rear-mounted 16-cylinder engine with 1,001 horsepower – roughly the equivalent of a couple of Porsche 911s combined – and a rear spoiler that helps keep the car from spinning out of control at high speeds. It needs just 2.5 seconds to accelerate from zero to 62 miles per hour, and burns rubber so quickly that its makers had to hire France’s Michelin SCA to develop a special compound for its tires. Its top speed: 252.9 mph.
Yet for all the car’s horsepower, VW acknowledges that many of those who buy the Veyron will seldom drive it, let alone at its top speed. Few, if any, public streets in the world allow motorists to approach anything near the car’s top speed. Repairs are another challenge. Bugatti officials say their dealers will have staff trained to handle routine maintenance needs, such as oil changes. For more complicated problems, the company says it will send over technicians from Europe.
It’s also not clear how long VW will keep making the car, which is being produced at the rate of less than one a week at a glass-walled factory in the Alsace region of France. The Veyron will be sold through a half dozen Bentley dealerships across the U.S., including sites in Miami, Troy, Mich., Beverly Hills, Calif., San Diego, Pasadena, Calif., and Greenwich, Conn. VW hopes to sell 300 over the next five years or so, but acknowledges production might stop if it doesn’t get enough orders.
fotos
http://www.wallpaper.net.au/wallpaper/automotive/Bugatti%20Veyron%202%20-%20800x600.jpg
http://home.quicknet.nl/qn/prive/jj.wijnstok/bugatti%20veyron03_11.jpg
