mordant wit

Bugatti’s troubled EB16.4 Veyron supercar has finally lived up to its promise and broken through 250mph in a test session at Volkswagen’s Ehra Lessian test track.

An official figure of 252.95 mph was recorded as the two-way average in the car’s most recent high-speed test run.

The figures see the Veyron smash the recent 241mph claimed by Koenigsegg with its CCR and the McLaren F1’s long standing 240.1mph record set in 1998. It’s not only the top speed that’s sensational but also the Bugatti’s acceleration. The four turbo, four-wheel-drive supercar sprints to 62mph in just 2.5 seconds and reaches 300kph (186mph) in a scarcely believable 16.7 seconds. To put those figures into perspective a merely fast car like an Aston Martin DB9 would take over a minute longer to reach 300kmh and sprints to 62mph in 4.9 seconds. The Bugatti makes even Porsche’s Carrera GT look pedestrian; it takes 3.9 seconds to reach 62mph and tops out at ‘just’ 205mph.