The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse 2013 is the carmaker's ultimate goal of bringing the achievements of the Super Sport on the convertible, making it the fastest car of its class in the world. Evidently a top down version of the Super Sport requires quite a lot of thinking and engineering, but Bugatti is no stranger to the concept of breaking the limits and exceeding expectations.
The convertible is motivated by the 9.0 liter W16 engine that delivers no more or less than 1200 horsepower at 6400 RPM, and an astonishing 1106 lb-ft of torque from 3000 to 5000 RPM. Evidently the Grand Sport shares a lot of other components with the Super Sportincluding the four bigger turbochargers, the intercooler and the quad fuel pump setup just to name a few.
In terms of performance I believe there's no mystery here. The Grand Sport goes from 0 to 60 mph in under 2.6 seconds, from a standstill to 124 mph in only 7.1 seconds and from 0 to 186 in 16 seconds. So what about the top speed? The Grand Sport can go up to 255 mph, but there's a bit of a catch. Evidently the roof needs to be on in order to achieve that top speed, because with the roof down the aerodynamics change and it affects how the supercar performs on the road. That being said, Bugatti had to implement a few changes when the roof is off. For instance, the rear wing knows when the hardtop has been detached and it changes its angle in order to increase downforce and aerodynamics. They also had to limit the car's top speed while in convertible mode to 233 mph.
Evidently in order to achieve this kind of performance you need to burn quite a lot of fuel and I'm pretty sure that whoever intends on purchasing a Grand Sport will not consider fuel efficiency while doing so, but just to give you an idea of how extreme this piece of engineering is, at full throttle the 8 liter W16 will burn it's entire tank of 26.4 gallons of gas in eight minutes and will gulp more air in one hour than a human being in one month.
As is tradition, the Grand Sport has built with no compromise and you still get the same level of luxury found in the previous models. It's a civilized sports car and offers a nice place to sit in. Everything seems perfect and from the moment you fire up the engine to the part where you put your foot down on the carbon-ceramic brakes, the Vitesse manages to impress quite a bit more than the one-trick-pony supercars we're used, such asLamborghinis and Ferraris.
However, it all comes at a price and the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse 2013 manages to impress even with its estimated base price of $2.5 million, which seems as out of this world as the car itself.