The Bugatti Veyron stormed onto the scene in 2005 and was the first car to be launched by Bugatti under the aegis of the Volkswagen group. Since then, this mid-engine sports car has captured the imaginations of many across the world, and continued a successful run all the way till 2015, after which it was replaced by the Bugatti Chiron.
The Veyron, at advent, replaced the Bugatti EB 110, named in honor of Ettore Bugatti. Only 139 of these were made from 1991 to 1995 because, by that time, Bugatti was in trouble, having acquired Lotus cars and trying to do too much too soon. There’s a dramatic aesthetic, and technological-difference between the EB 110 and sparkling Veyron, mostly because Volkswagen breathed new life into a bankrupt company by acquiring it in 1998. Before that Lotus was sold to the Malaysian group, Proton.
After a decade of no new cars, Bugatti, now Volkswagen-owned, unveiled the Veyron in 2005 and the rest, as they say, is history. This is what we remember of the 2005-first-year Bugatti Veyron…
The Concept Cars Before The Veyron
After acquiring the rights to Bugatti in 1998, Volkswagen guided the company into making a successor to the respected EB 110 model. But before the Veyron, there were a series of concept cars.
Between 1998 and 1999, there are EB-numbered concept vehicles. There was the EB 118, a two-door luxury coupe riding on the Volkswagen W18 engine and a permanent four-wheel-drive. Then came the EB 218, a four-door saloon and finally there was the 18/3 Chiron, a mid-engine sports car at the time.
Finally, the Veyron name came to play. Veyron was an ode to Bugatti engineer and race driver Pierre Veyron who had won the 1939 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Bugatti with co-driver Jean-Pierre Wimille. The EB 18/4 Veyron, unveiled in 1999 at the Tokyo Motor Show was a mid-engined sports car, later upgraded into the EB 16/4 Veyron in 2000 and shown at the Geneva, Paris as well as Detroit Motor Shows. The car now bore a W16 engine, and it's this car that was finally given the nod in 2001.
The prototype came out in 2003 but major technical bugs and issues kept the production on hold till September 2005.
Presenting: The 2005 Bugatti Veyron
The Bugatti Veyron was a sensation, bearing an 8.0-liter quad-turbocharged W16 engine, basically equal to two smooshed-up V8 engines spliced together. The power output, carefully certified, came out to be 987 horsepower along with a mind-boggling 922 ft-lb of torque. To manage the volcanic heat of the engine, the Veyron carried 10 radiators to cool itself down.
This kind of insane power was mated to a dual-clutch automatic transmission that was electronically controlled for a shift time of fewer than 150 milliseconds and the car rode on a permanent all-wheel-drive. In the case you burnt out the clutch of the Veyron, the AT could be replaced at a whopping cost of $120,000, like the cost of three Mustangs!
At the time, the Veyron cost $1.24 million… But the actual cost of owning one was much higher. The tire-shredding speed could not be managed by any ordinary tires so in went a set of $25,000 Michelin PAX run-flat tires and a change could only be done so in France, each service costing another $70,000!
The 100-liter fuel tank let the Veyron drive some 238 miles before bottoming out, so there was another major expense to consider, fuel costs!
But all the costs faded away in the glory of the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, which became the first production car ever to surpass the 249 mph speed barrier and hit 253.81 mph at the VW’s Ehra-Lessien test track, on April 29, 2005.
All in all, 252 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 were made and sold. The rest of the Veyron models were 58 Grand Sports, 48 Super Sports, and 92 Grand Sport Vitesse's, for a total of 450 Veyrons.
The Future Of The Veyron
The Veyron continued its run all the way till 2015, despite initially being thought of as "a car never going to see the daylight", keeping the interminable delays in mind. Later, Jeremy Clarkson called it “the greatest car ever made and the greatest car we will ever see in our lifetime”.
Technically speaking, the Veyron was an effort in futility if we talk profits. Made at a prohibitive cost of almost $6 million, the Veyron was sold at a major loss, for only $1.24 million. But it has gone down in the history of all things magnificent and automobiles and continues to be a benchmark.
Later, the Veyron was replaced by the Chiron in 2015, and production for this is also limited to 500 units only. Much like the Veyron, the Chiron is also breaking records and setting them, and can only be bought by a very exclusive set of people from whom money is as common as toilet paper. The top speed for the base model is 261 mph and if you go for the 1,578-horsepower Chiron Super Sport 300+, it has recorded a top speed of 304.773 mph. Mind blown, period!
Sources: AutomobileMagazine, CNN, RobbReport