The Bugatti Veyron

“It’s like the Nissan GTR on LSD: it alters the way in which you perceive the world around you.”
-Angus Mackenzie.

It goes from standstill to 400 km/h in less than one minute. It has an average top speed of 408.47 km/h. It is faster than any other production car in the world. And that’s because it’s not just any production car: it is built out of technology and materials from outside of the automobile industry. To start, the front and rear frames are constructed from high-strength aircraft stained steal, welded in the same way as aircrafts are, taking from 80 to 90 hours to make one of these handcrafted parts. It’s produced by Heggeman Aerospace, a company involved in building jets and rockets, and who is also responsible for the car’s hydraulic rear wing. This wing is one of the features that make this car so special. It makes sure that at a speed from 220 km/h, it provides a down force of 3.425 newtons.

Oddly enough, this is not even its main function. If you are moving at these kinds of speed, you better have a good set of brakes. Although the carbon fibre C/SiC (reinforced silicon carbide) composite discs already make up of 2/3 of the breaking power, the other 1/3 is coming from the rear wing, set in an angle of 55°. To control the rear wing you need something unimaginably fast to measure the cars speed and changes in its speed. Here’s where the technology comes in. We are talking about a sensor unit that is actually the fastest piece in the car. It measures the time it takes a pulse of light to follow a wire, hit a magnet and reflect back as an ultrasonic sound wave. This information is then being sent to the car’s computer, which calculates how to react. When accelerating above 220 km/h, it will adjust into an angle of 15°, and when increasing into 370 km/h, it will even change into an angle of only 2°.

When making high speeds stops, the computer will put the wing in a 55° angle, in only four tenths of a second, so that the car brakes from 400km/h to standstill within a distance of 0.5 km and less than 10 seconds. To be more precise, the car can make stops from 200 km/h to a complete standstill in 2.2 seconds. So actually this car brakes faster than it accelerates (0 to 200 km/h in 2.5 seconds). Thus, the 4000 hp. needed to brake greatly exceeds its 1001 hp. of motive power.

If you’re not yet in love with this car, all it will take is one drive. In contrast with most supercars, driving, racing and handling this car is simple, even your granny can do it, all thanks to the car’s computer. It controls the traction, the stability, the rear wing, the heat production, and so on. This incredible piece of intelligence is essential to the extraordinary accomplishments of the Bugatti Veyron.