This is the fastest, most powerful and most expensive production car in history. The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 will do 253mph, has an 8 litre 16-cylinder engine producing in excess of 1000bhp, and a price of £810,000.

Let’s think about that for a moment: 253mph is faster than a Formula One racing car or Concorde at the point of take-off. The Veyron’s power unit, open to the air behind the driver, is four times the size of the engine in your regular family saloon and, boosted by four turbochargers, 10 times as powerful. And the price is 50 times that of the average car.

Of course it doesn’t make sense. Nobody needs a Bugatti Veyron. But that doesn’t diminish its status as an ultimate in technology. It is a billionaire’s prized possession, the automotive equivalent of one of those hideously expensive Swiss watches. And it will be the stuff of dreams, the bedroom poster for a generation of young boys.

Everyone wants to know what it can do. Last week I was one of the fortunate few to find out first hand.

I drove the Veyron on motorways and mountain roads in Sicily and experienced it on the Enna-Pergusa racetrack. I reached no more than three-quarters of its top speed but that’s okay; my American colleague Csaba Csere of Car and Driver magazine had verified its 253mph maximum at the VW test track in northern Germany.

Within the limits of normal if lightly populated roads and sympathetic local police this is still a car that transcends previous experience; there has never been a 1000bhp production model. Yet it has none of the temperament of supercars that are derived from racing machines.

Climb in, press the starter button, engage D on the gear selector lever and off you go. Neither accelerator nor brake is fierce, the steering is accurate but requires no great effort. The engine dawdles if you want to, docile and undemanding, yet when a clear road opens ahead it is ready for acceleration that is beyond normal comprehension.

The Veyron can reach 62mph from a standstill in 2.5sec and 122mph in 7.3sec. When 0-60mph in 7sec is the mark of a quick car, this one is out of the world as we know it — all two tons of it.

When you press the accelerator to the floor — and you had better be prepared for the rocket-like response — the needle on a dial to the left of the instrument panel flicks round to 1001. It’s a power indicator and it has absolutely no use except to give the driver a sense of awe. It should be called a “boast gauge”.

The 240mph McLaren F1, the previous speed champion among road cars, is much lighter but was designed in the 1990s with a different philosophy that deleted all non-essential features, including many of the safety systems that VW made obligatory in the Veyron. The F1 is an expert’s car.

The Ferrari Enzo, Porsche Carrera GT and other recent pretenders to the supercar throne are essentially racing cars adapted for road use. The Bugatti Veyron is not intended for racing but holds a trump card compared with these: its seven-speed DSG transmission. It works brilliantly and contributes to the Bugatti’s ease of progress and level of driving refinement.

So, the best car in the world? It depends on your attitude. For all its phenomenal range of capability this is not a car for the shopping run (do billionaires go shopping?) or even a weekend away. Its boot can carry just a briefcase, the engine is always noisy, visibility anywhere but directly forward is restricted, it is more than 6ft wide and parking is a nightmare. Oh, and there are no roads where you can do 250mph.

You could also argue that a car that costs so much should be perfect. To do so would be churlish. The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is a magnificent achievement.

VITAL STATISTICS

Model Bugatti Veyron 16.4
Engine type 7993cc, 16 cylinders in a W
Power/Torque 1001bhp @ 6000rpm / 922 lb ft @ 2200rpm
Transmission Seven-speed DSG, manual and automatic
Fuel/CO2 11.7mpg (combined) / 574g/km
Performance 0-62mph: 2.5sec / Top speed: 253mph
Price £810,345
Verdict Blows away all the other supercars
Rating Five stars

OPPOSITION

Model Ferrari Enzo (was £418,000; no longer available)
For Pure race technology made street legal
Against No creature comforts, brutal F1 gearshift

Model Porsche Carrera GT £321,093
For A remarkably civilised roadgoing racer
Against Tricky clutch and 603bhp is not enough


Page two: Just who is going to buy the beast?()Just who is going to buy the beast?

The Veyron has had a nightmare birth, and the company is being very cagey about its order book, report Joseph Dunn and Nicholas Rufford

This car was created by a boast. Ferdinand Piëch, the engineer who became the boss of Volkswagen, bought the rights to the Bugatti marque — famed for its racing machines and extravagant touring cars in the 1920s and 1930s — and decided to use it to demonstrate that the VW group could surpass all rivals in technology. He pledged the power and performance of the Veyron (named after Pierre Veyron, one of Bugatti’s most successful racers) would be unmatched.

Some called it “Piëch’s folly” and behind the jibe lies a nagging question. Will anyone buy it? Bugatti plans to make 50 a year and says its customers will be discerning individuals who want to own the highest expression of automotive technology. Supposedly the company has advance orders for between 30 and 40 Veyrons, but the customers’ identities are secret.

Reports that David Beckham and Ralph Lauren are among those who have paid the €300,000 (£205,000) deposit are untrue. Other names that have been mooted because they are wealthy car buffs include Sheikh Maktoum, founder of the A1 racing championship, Jay Leno, the American chat show host, and Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One billionaire.

So far the only confirmed sales are to Piëch’s wife Ursula, who has taken delivery of No 7 (the chassis number is 007), and Thomas Bscher, Bugatti’s president, a racing driver turned banker who has been known to commute from his home in Cologne to Frankfurt at 200mph in a McLaren F1.

An American who reportedly netted millions from the sale of a publishing business was rumoured to have bought No 1 for his private collection and a second car as a runabout. Ricardo Puente is the former head of TransWestern which was the US’s largest independent publisher of telephone directories before it was taken over by UK-based Yell (publisher of Yellow Pages) earlier this year. Bugatti denied the claim and Puente could not be reached for comment.

Even if the Veyron does sell its production run, it may never make a profit or even break even. The cost of the project — another secret — is known to have taken its toll on Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest car manufacturer. The company has been hit by slowing sales, falling profits, cost cutting and a restless workforce, but the money lavished on the Veyron has been seemingly endless.

The engineering team responsible faced technical challenges it did not expect and at one time seemed unable to overcome. There was not enough room for the radiators and ducts needed to cool the W16 engine. No transmission existed that could cope with its monstrous torque. How could a car that could exceed 250mph in a straight line be made safe, stable and yet easily drivable on a wet and twisty road? And, coming from Volkswagen, the Bugatti had to meet the same safety, exhaust emission and durability standards as a Golf or a Polo.

The solutions, when they came, two years later than planned, made this an incredibly complex car. It has four-wheel drive, electronic traction and stability controls, a hydraulic system to lower the body and deploy a rear aerofoil at different angles depending on speed (and also act as an air brake for an emergency stop), ceramic brake discs reinforced with carbon fibre, titanium springs and exhaust system, and special ultra-wide Michelin run-flat tyres rated for 250mph.

Adding to the research and development costs, the car is being built in luxurious style in a French chateau converted into a state-of-the-art production line.

Such flamboyance during tough times has not played well with many VW shareholders and industry commentators, some claiming the project reeks of hubris. “The problem is that the whole idea is simply unsustainable,” says Garel Rhys at Cardiff Business School. “It is impossible for the car to make back the money that has been spent on it, and in this time of cheap imports from Asia threatening the profitability of a company like VW’s bread-and-butter cars, it is sheer madness.”

However, according to George Keller, a spokesman for Bugatti, the exercise is not just about prestige but also the technological advance the car will bring with it. “It is not necessarily about making money,” he says. “The whole philosophy behind the machine is more than that. It is about extending our brand and moving into areas that have never been explored before. There are plenty of people who want to spend €1m on a car — the market is full of them.”

Piëch will not want to be reminded of how Ettore Bugatti’s company was undone by his creation of the world’s ultimate luxury car, the Royale, an eight-cylinder 300bhp beauty that was introduced just in time for the Depression. Only three were sold. A few years after the second world war the company closed.

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