How Bugatti woos the last Veyron buyers with raw speed: Motoramic Video

I’m hurtling toward the desert scrub brush at 176 mph, 16 cylinders behind me and very little runway ahead. That’s OK, because I’m about to call upon 2 Gs of deceleration from the rear air brake and carbon rotors the size of crop circles. This is not a usual dealership test drive. This is what it’s like to be courted by Bugatti.

If you’re lucky enough to have a Veyron-sized hole in your car budget, Bugatti would like to talk to you about its Dynamic Drive Program. There are 40 or so open-top Veyrons left to build, which is to say that Bugatti still has about $100 million worth of cars to sell. So it’s offering potential buyers a sort of super-deluxe test drive that incorporates both street driving and a few full-throttle blasts down a private runway. At no point are you pressured to buy undercoating or insurance for your insurance.

How do you land an invitation to such an event? Well, if you’re a likely candidate, they know how to get in touch. Their people talk to your people, and the next thing you know you’ve got 1,200 hp beneath your right foot. And possibly, after that, a slightly depleted bank account and the title to a Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse. I say that if you can go full-throttle in a Veyron for 15 seconds and not deeply want one, you’re truly the embodiment of money not buying happiness.

The Dynamic Drive Program is a tour — the goal is to visit four cities annually — and I’ve weaseled into its second stop, in Palm Springs, Calif. The morning begins with a street drive on the Pines to Palms Highway, which wends its way out of town and up toward prettier-than-it-sounds Asbestos Mountain. Driving a Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse on scenic mountain switchbacks is certainly fun, but it is a little bit like high-diving into a five-gallon bucket. This thing needs room to roam. Plus, within five minutes a California Highway Patrol chopper is already circling us. If the screaming orange convertible isn’t visible from space, we’re on notice that it’s definitely visible from the sky.

I content myself, then, with brief dips into the throttle to orchestrate the singular soundtrack playing just behind the seats. The first squeeze of the accelerator triggers the cicada chatter of the fuel injectors, followed soon thereafter by the almighty gasps and sighs of the quad turbos as they inhale and summarily dump boost. Backing suddenly out of the throttle — as is frequently required in a car that’s Formula 1-quick — results in a whoosh like a Kenworth’s air brakes. An internal combustion engine is essentially an air pump, and no other car better reminds you of its capacity to rearrange the atmosphere.

The afternoon brings the main event, a trio of banzai runs down a taxiway at Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport in Thermal. The taxiway is 4,000 feet, which is enough for planes but barely enough for a Veyron. Still, the plan is to rocket from a standstill to 175 mph or so before exercising the rear wing’s usefulness as an air-brake. Bugatti Test Pilot Andy Wallace takes me down the strip on a demo run before we trade places and I slide behind the wheel. Poor Wallace just went from the best job in the world to maybe the worst. He doesn’t exactly have the ol’ driver’s ed brake pedal over there on the passenger side.

Zero to 60 mph in a Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse might be within your frame of reference — even with 365-width rear tires and all-wheel-drive, 0-60 is a traction-limited affair. A Veyron is in the same ballpark as a 911 Turbo S or the aforementioned F1 car, which is to say: more than two seconds but less than three. It’s what happens after 60 mph that separates the Veyron from its fellow exotics.

Every car with an aero-limited top speed plots an acceleration graph that looks like an inverted hockey stick. But with the Veyron, you’re on the steep part of the climb far beyond the point where mortal exotics have begun straining for each additional mile per hour. Forget 0-60 — start at 100 mph and take a look at the next 60. According to my informal stopwatch, 100-160 mph took about 6.5 seconds. So if you’ve got a car that runs 0-60 in 6.5 — reasonably quick — that’s how hard a Veyron is pulling above 100 mph. A 4,000-foot runway disappears all too quickly.

Bugatti built 300 Veyron coupes and will cease production when they’ve sold 150 roadsters. They’re in the home stretch, which is why I’m profoundly bummed after my second run down the track. It feels like the end of something, namely my opportunities to connive my way into Veyron wheel time. When those 40 or so cars are sold, the show’s over.

Not just for the Veyron, but for the 250-mph road car. Ferrari, Porsche and McLaren all have new super-dupercars, and none of them even try to match the Bugatti’s outrageous top end. The reason might be counterintuitive. “It’s the tires,” says Butch Leitzinger, who drove with me on the morning excursion. “Nobody will make tires that can safely handle 250 miles per hour.” The Veyron’s Michelins cost $42,000 per set and you likely won’t find them in stock at your local Slappy’s Tire Emporium. Of course, you can do 250 mph on other tires. Just make sure your affairs are in order before you do.

We expect progress to move ever forward, but the impending retirement of the Veyron feels like the grounding of the Concorde. It’ll be sad when the Veyron is a past-tense supercar, a moment that creeps closer with each car they sell. But for now, there are 40 more sets of keys and a few more stops on the Dynamic Drive tour. Stand by your phones. They’ll be in touch.