2009 Bugatti Veyron

Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport – Click above for high-res image gallery Just like the last time, when we drove the Bugatti Veyron, it began with an e-mail from Bugatti's PR firm: "Give me a call when you have a moment." And then, again, just like the last time, there came the question: "We have a Grand Sport. Can you do something with it?" Let. Me. See. And that's how we ended up spending a day with the roofless Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport on a reference-resetting trip from Los Angeles to San Diego and back. Although you'll read many words after the jump to describe it, we really only need one word, and we'd draw it out in the same kind of smiling stupor we get when the dentist pumps us full of happy gas: "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh...." Follow the jump for the story. %Gallery-66299% Photos copyright ©2009 Drew Phillips / Weblogs, Inc. The Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport is a violent, taunting, confounding and punctiliously engineered maelstrom. It is a handmade wonder built in a castle, and yet resembles a slightly squashed jelly bean. It has a $30,000 stereo, but it's too much work to actually listen to it. The 16-cylinder, quad-turbocharged engine with 1,001 horsepower and 922 lb-ft of torque is programmed not to let you damage it, but in just one afternoon, the leather-trimmed coachwork on the doors will be a mess of shoe marks. The car's brake rotors are chaperoned by 28 brake pistons, but using them forcefully is like begging someone to plow into the aforementioned engine. The car will cost you €1.6 million (roughly $2.24M USD), for which you get, as a soft top, an umbrella. That's right, an umbrella. Own it and you'll be master of the quickest accelerating production car in the world, and yet you'll probably never remember what that acceleration is like. But we'll get to that in a moment. When we drove the Veyron coupe, we admitted to not being carried away by its looks, but we found a greater appreciation for the lines of this car. Excising a portion of the roof doesn't change our minds, but that isn't to say that the design doesn't look good. More importantly, that isn't to say that the Bugatti doesn't have a certain... something... that will impress itself upon you even after just one meeting. From the side, although the car's surfaces are austere, how they intersect in three dimensions is rather lively. Our favorite line is from the rear three-quarter, the fender edge that forms the shoulder of the door then appears to turnabout in a varying-radius 180, back to the front wheel, and delineates the top edge of sill. That, however, is actually a trick of the eye. From the side and especially the front, follow the line of the door and it's as if the car came in two pieces, with the narrower front slotting into a much more commodious rear component. It isn't usually a compliment to say "You …
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