Just when you thought Bugatti couldn't make up any more Veyron variants, they've gone and done it again. This one's called the Grand Sport Vitesse, and Bugatti says it's the fastest roadster in the world.
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The standard Grand Sport, you may recall, is limited to just 217 mph. Thanks to some lessons learned on the SS, though, Bugatti's found a bit more speed for the Vitesse. Thanks to bigger turbochargers (all four of them), the Vitesse cranks out 1200 horsepower and 1106 pound-feet of torque, giving it a top speed of 229 mph. CEO Wolfgang Durheimer says the wind buffeting isn't noticeable until 186 mph. We'll have to see about that.
The Vitesse isn't all straight line speed, though. Thanks to chassis and suspension improvements gleaned again from the SS, Durheimer says the Vitesse will pull a mind-bending 1.4 lateral g.
About the only thing Durheimer didn't say is what it will cost. With Bugattis typically running in the $2 million - $3 million range, though, you can bet it won't be cheap.
Stay tuned for more live updates from the 2012 Geneva Motor Show, or follow me on Twitter @MT_Evans for up-to-the-minute updates.
Were you one of those kids who taught themselves to identify cars at night by their headlights and taillights? I was. I was also one of those kids with a huge box of Hot Wheels and impressive collection of home-made Lego hot rods. I asked my parents for a Power Wheels Porsche 911 for Christmas for years, though the best I got was a pedal-powered tractor. I drove the wheels off it. I used to tell my friends I’d own a “slug bug” one day. When I was 15, my dad told me he would get me a car on the condition that I had to maintain it. He came back with a rough-around-the-edges 1967 Volkswagen Beetle he’d picked up for something like $600. I drove the wheels off that thing, too, even though it was only slightly faster than the tractor. When I got tired of chasing electrical gremlins (none of which were related to my bitchin’ self-installed stereo, thank you very much), I thought I’d move on to something more sensible. I bought a 1986 Pontiac Fiero GT and got my first speeding ticket in that car during the test drive. Not my first-ever ticket, mind you. That came behind the wheel of a Geo Metro hatchback I delivered pizza in during high school. I never planned to have this job. I was actually an aerospace engineering major in college, but calculus and I had a bad breakup. Considering how much better my English grades were than my calculus grades, I decided to stick to my strengths and write instead. When I made the switch, people kept asking me what I wanted to do with my life. I told them I’d like to write for a car magazine someday, not expecting it to actually happen. I figured I’d be in newspapers, maybe a magazine if I was lucky. Then this happened, which was slightly awkward because I grew up reading Car & Driver, but convenient since I don’t live in Michigan. Now I just try to make it through the day without adding any more names to the list of people who want to kill me and take my job.
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