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Written by Anthony Crawford & Alborz Fallah
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After twenty-three gruelling hours in a seriously packed economy class cabin, we arrived in Frankfurt via Abu Dhabi, ready for what we thought was a well earned luxury business class flight to Strasbourg in France.
Turns out, our double degree IT guru and fellow motoring journalist Alborz, (who said his friend at flight centre had it sorted), had completely misread the ticket. Bus – actually meant BUS – the road going version. All sorted?
By some stroke of luck though, the bus company had grossly overbooked both Strasbourg bound buses, and Bruno, the guy at the Lufthansa desk, worked some magic and presto, we had a Ford Mondeo TDCi for twenty-four hours, at no cost. Gold, we thought.
The diesel powered Mondeo is no slouch, within moments we are sitting on a comfortable 200km/h as we head towards Molsheim, the home of Bugatti.
It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes into the trip and bugger, something felt badly out of whack with the front end. What we found, was a dirty great big hole in the middle of the right front tyre tread, which meant we weren’t going anywhere fast. That is, until we got the spare on and rebooted to that blissful 200km/h.
The look of disappointment on our faces, when we lifted the boot lining and saw that 125-width space saver, said it all. And it was a Sunday!
Rather than push on at an impossible 80km/h (its downright dangerous on the Autobahns) we stopped in at Hertz in Heidelberg and switched over to a little Peugeot 307 1.6L diesel powered wagon, which believe it or not, was good for a steady 190km/h and that’s hauling the four of us, with a stack of luggage and camera equipment!
Alborz also forgot to download the Euro maps on our Mio Sat Nav and we were damn too tired to figure out the road map. Lots of stops to ask directions in my half decent French (the other’s will surely deny me that credit) eventually paid off.
Molsheim is not a big place, and when we saw the Bugatti sign inside a high security compound, smiles were a plenty. We were less than twelve hours away from an event, few in the world will ever claim.
As we handed over Passports in exchange for Bugatti ID badges, we caught a glimpse of our car through some trees in the distance. We had arrived. After six months of planning and requests, we were about to get an introduction to the world’s fastest production car.
Julius Kruta has been with Bugatti for just on seven years and take it from me, he’s not going anywhere. His title on his business card reads “Leiter Tradition” which I translate as Head of Bugatti tradition.
He’s a mild mannered yet confident guy, about thirty-five years old and while I’m not sure about his cooking, his performance behind the wheel of the Veyron borders on the astonishing!
And if you need to know anything at all about the Veyron or Bugatti the company, I mean down to what colour shoes Ettore Bugatti wore on Wednesdays, ask Julius. He’ll know.
The first thing that hits you about the car, is how much better it looks in the metal as opposed to the photos we have all seen. Its quite beautiful, yet utterly daunting.
Julius starts to explain the car but at this point I’m finding it hard
to focus on what he is saying to us about the Veyron. I should be
listening intently, but all I can think of, is how on earth I can raise
the AUD$2.7 million to buy one!
The Bugatti hugs the ground in standard ride height but you’ve got three suspension heights, (the other two are lower again) depending on how brave you’re going to be when you commit your right foot to the throttle. I’m not kidding about the brave part either!
You can’t quite believe the size of the tyres on board the Veyron either. Initially, I couldn’t make out the digits on the tyre wall. Too many numbers. 365-710 ZR 540A (108Y) PAX System is inscribed on the rears for example. What you’re looking at are the widest set of run flat tyres on the planet, jointly developed with Michelin for speeds over 400km/h.
What does blow you away, is the view from the rear of the Veyron. The fully exposed engine is breathtaking. Two huge polished metal heat exchangers, beautiful in form, sit either side, ready to suck in the enormous volume of air needed to cool over 1001 plus horsepower, at full throttle.
Our time at Bugatti has come to a close and we can’t thank Volkswagen
and the team at Bugatti (Julius and Jan) enough. We take some last
minute stills of the car before we race back to Strasbourg to catch a
plane to Bologna for a rendezvous with two Lamborghini’s first thing in
the morning.
For more information caradvice.com.au
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