Holy crap - there is fast

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about the test driver for the SS Veyron... he has to take potential buyers on their test drives....

I love this sentence...
The Super Sport can accelerate from highway speeds to more than 200 mph in the time it takes you to read this sentence out loud.

and later on this...
The Super Sport, said Mr. Kruta, was built in response to customers who, incredibly enough, asked for a sportier version of the Veyron -- because, obviously, the Veyron was such a sissy cupcake of a car.

The New Bugatti: Waiting for Superman No More
by Dan Neil
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
I've encountered some pretty courageous people in my time. I once shook John Glenn's hand. I've seen Pierce Brosnan sing in public. But the bravest guy I've met lately is Pierre-Henri Raphanel, the pilote officiel for the Molsheim, France-based car maker Bugatti. It was Mr. Raphanel who, in July, strapped himself into the new Veyron 16.4 Super Sport and circuited Volkswagen's Ehra-Lessien test track at an astonishing 268 mph, setting a new Guinness land-speed record for a production car.

"Eet was weally stress-phol," said the 49-year-old French former race champion, whose accent sounds like it came out of a perfume bottle. "I was a leetle bit scared." Quelle surprise. The biggest threat was that the huge Michelin tires might literally disintegrate due to the friction.

The slightest imperfection of machining in the gearbox's componentry, fashioned months before, might have been lying in wait, ready to explode like Apollo 13's oxygen tanks. Any sort of computer hiccup in the fuel-delivery system -- pumping 10 liters per minute into the quad-turbo, 8-liter, 16-cylinder, 1,200-horsepower reactor behind the seats -- could have upset the car's aero balance, sending it careering across the track like an arrow that's lost its fletching.

Crosswinds, birds, brakes and, yes, even driver error -- all could have ended the interesting life of Pierre-Henri Raphanel. This was automotive marketing as death sport.

But Mr. Raphanel's greater feat of fortitude now lies ahead. It's his job to take customers on demonstration drives in the Super Sport, an extreme-performance version of the Bugatti Veyron, and sit in the passenger seat while mere civilians like myself drive this exquisite, barbaric, incomparable automobile at speeds faster than a Formula 1 car. The Super Sport can accelerate from highway speeds to more than 200 mph in the time it takes you to read this sentence out loud. Literally.
There's lots more at the link....
 

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