2014 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse - It Doesn't Even Have Electric Seats

So, you missed out on your chance to buy one of the 300 Veyron coupés ever built? (They have all been sold.) Don't worry; you can get in line for one of the even smaller number of Grand Sport Vitesse convertibles. Not sure what the deposit on a two point five million dollar car might be, but if you have to ask, you cannot afford it.

The Veyron project sprang from the fevered brow of VW bossman Dr. Ferdinand Piech. The car was intended to be a technical tour-de-force, befitting its famous name. It was also intended to be the most powerful and fastest car ever built for road use. It was. But the original had a mere 1,001 horsepower; the car could barely get out of its own way.

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Yes, that is a little joke.

The Grand Sport variant has bigger turbos, four of them,  pressurizing air to the 16-cylinder "W" engine (think two Volkswagen Passat/Phaeton W8 engines bolted together) raising output to 1,200 horsepower. That's more like it. The transmission is a seven-speed Dual Clutch auto-shifted manual, driving all four wheels. Use the launch control, and 0 - 100 km/h comes up in 2.6 seconds. And at that point the car is just beginning to catch its breath; if your driveway is long enough, top speed is over 400 km/h.

Fuel Consumption? Who cares?

While you obviously will never be able to exploit the limits of performance of this car and stay out of jail, you will however  be constantly entertained by the noise. The air intakes for the engine are right behind your ears, and the whirs-hisses-bangs-pops they emit are a constant companion. It's the closest you will ever get aurally to a car engine.

The independent suspension has three settings - essentially, Firm, Firmer and Firmest. The gigantic ceramic brakes haul the thing down as if it ran into the world's biggest mattress. Only the steering - which is very light and rather less connected with the road than you'd expect from a car this powerful - is not quite to the calibre of the rest of the car. You might also wonder about a car this expensive without power seats or power tilt-/telescope steering wheel.

The carbon fibre tub has been reinforced to account for the lack of a roof, yet despite the space-age materials, the car still weighs over 2,000 kg.

But once it starts to move, you understand that the irresistible force overcomes the immovable object. You will most likely only ever want to drive this car with the top 'removed'. I say 'removed' rather than 'down' because your top-up options consist of a 'Targa' roof panel which despite weighing only 20 kg needs two people to install to jockey it over the car's massive fenders; or a fabric roof that opens like an umbrella and is popped into place.

There's no place to store the hardtop in the car itself, so you have to decide before you leave your mansion if you're even going to consider it. When the soft top is not being carried in the front-mounted trunk, there is space in there for - oh, maybe a very thin wallet and a windbreaker. You will travel light in your Bugatti.

It is impossible really to rationally criticize a car this expensive. You want one, you can afford one - you buy one. Simple. Nothing I or anyone can say will affect your decision at all. Just understand that wherever you go people will know it's you. So you better not be somewhere you're not supposed to be, or be with someone you're not supposed to be with. You won't be able to say, "Oh no, that was the OTHER Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse you saw...".

One more thing - at 185 km/h, the side windows roll up automatically all by themselves, to reduce wind turbulence inside the cabin. Just don't ask how come I know that.