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MY mission today is to offer my clear-eyed take on the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport. But the price keeps getting in the way.

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November 9, 2009 8:26 am
By Peter C. T. Elsworth

Check out Lawrence Ulrich's hilarious - he describes it as the automotive equivalent of a Fabergé egg - review of the $2.1 million Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport in The New York Times:

My mission today is to offer my clear-eyed take on the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport. But the price keeps getting in the way,

This removable-roof version of the Veyron coupe costs 1.4 million euros, or roughly $2.1 million. I say roughly, because the Bugatti's price can fluctuate about $14,000 a day simply from one-cent adjustments in exchange rates.

For that price, a rare species of car owner gets a rocket that gleams across the planet's surface faster than any true production automobile that has come before. The Bugatti shifts occupants around like a Star Trek transporter: from a standstill to 60 miles per hour in 2.7 seconds, to 125 m.p.h. in just over 7 seconds and on to a top speed of 253 m.p.h. -- though 401 kilometers per hour has a better bullet-train ring to it.

Particulars include 1,001 horsepower, 16 cylinders, 8 liters of engine displacement, 4 turbochargers, all-wheel drive and a dual-clutch automatic transmission. Only 150 Grand Sports will be built, tacked onto 300 editions of the Veyron coupe, making the Bugatti the automotive equivalent of a Fabergé egg. A $450,000 deposit gets that egg rolling at Bugatti's atelier in Molsheim, France.

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