Bugatti Veyron Top Speed Test - Top Gear - BBC

as I'm sure you know James May is the slowest man in the entire world by the time he sets off anywhere normally his hair has grown another inch so plainly he was the ideal man to try and Max the fastest car in the world lad the Impaler is back last year the mighty Bugatti Veyron starred in our greatest Top Gear challenge ever when it raised an aeroplane across the continent in that film Jeremy talked endlessly about the Veyrons ferocious power and its incredible top speed but because he was on public roads he had to stick to the speed limit but today we're not going to talk about it we're going to do it we're going to take the fastest production car in the world up to its top speed that top speed is 253 miles per hour much faster than a Formula One car [Music] and when you think that the Veyron has airbags air conditioning a stereo a boot and all the other stuff f1 cars aren't burdened with you realize what an incredible machine this is the Veyron is about pushing the outside of the envelope it's about doing things that people said just were not possible this car is a sort of Concorde moment getting your car to do 155 miles per hour friendly isn't really very difficult the Veyron needs just a piffling 270 horsepower to reach that speed but 253 thank you but faster you go the more mother nature tries to hold you back so to do the next hundred miles per hour the hundred life rather takes you up to two hundred and fifty meet another 730 horsepower so what you end up with is a sixty cylinder engine with four turbochargers producing 1,001 horsepower and a lot of truth that's why your car has a one radiator and this car has the engineers really were in uncharted territory with this here's an example when they wanted to sort out the high speed aerodynamics they went to this saga f1 team but they said do you mind awfully if we use your wind tunnel and they said terribly sorry but we don't go up to those speeds in fact cracking 253 miles per hour caused nightmare after nightmare but Bugatti insist that this 850 thousand pound car can do it [Music] mind you actually testing their bold claim is a bit of a pallava this is err unless I'm Volkswagens maximum security test track in Germany when it was built during the Cold War it was deliberately sited in a no-fly zone near the East German border in order to stop prying eyes from seeing secret prototypes it has over 60 miles of private track but the bit we're interested in is the main straight which is a whopping five and a half miles long although it is technically a flat and level road if you stand here you can't actually see the other end and that's because it's following the curvature of the earth but even when you've sorted the venue you can't just jump in the car and gun Germany there are procedures to go through I like procedures you have to insert a special key into a slot by the door and when you do the diffuser flaps close the rear spoiler retracts and the whole car hunkers down to become as slippery as possible the telemetry box we're using to record the speed measures in kilometers an hour so the magic number we're looking for is 407 Dead Island here we go I'm approaching the banking at the top of the circuit I have to do this at 200 kilometres an hour that's about 120 around the banking look for my acceleration point then give it the beans down the Straits [Music] swen see in the car settled fourth gear 5000 draft various but wine from 200 to 300 kilometres an hour was over in just nine point four seconds [Music] [Music] seventy that's 230 miles per hour I was now leaving f1 cars behind which means that [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm pretty confident that's as fast as I'm ever gonna go in a car incredible that is my eyes water [Music] okay thing is though okay you know when you take a Ferrari or a Lamborghini or particularly a Koenigsegg to its top speed no no actually you wouldn't but anyway when you do they fizz and they buzz and it feels like all the body panels are peeling away because you're right on the edge of what's physically and technically possible really I didn't get any of that with this to be honest the only thing I got was at the end of the straight had to touch the brake so you see the spoiler come up down you've got a sort of and that's it yeah just so it's kind of safe and relaxing even at 250 miles an hour absolutely yeah it's it's totally undramatic buddies but I would give you a bit of a warning which is it's a bit disorientating doing that sort of speed because after I come off the banking or slowing down to stop you know you get a bit impatient they got I'll just open the door fortunately I looked back at the speedo and I was still doing 70 okay so we've established that this is faster across Europe than your light aircraft yep we've established that it really will do 250 miles an hour but we've never been able to find out how fast it'll go round our track now the problem is is Bugatti a happy for us to have won here they're happy for you to go and do that but they won't lend the Stig one so really this is an appeal if you've got a Veyron and you'd like to lend it to us we are prepared to pay anything up to 30 pounds you

Channel: Top Gear

Views: 17,749,696

Keywords: BBC, Top, Gear, Jeremy, Clarkson, Stig, Hammond, James May, Bugatti Veyron, Top Speed, Test, Race, Captain Slow, BBC Worldwide, Top Gear, Topgear, Cars, Car, Autos, Motoring, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, Richard, James, May, The Stig, Bugatti Veyron Top Speed Test, Bugatti Veyron Top Speed, Top Speed Test, Speed Test

Id: LO0PgyPWE3o

Length: 9min 43sec (583 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 16 2008

Reddit Comments

[u/childofsol]

Derp, here is the HD version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC00qHonfj8

[u/artemisdragmire]

This video doesn't show the best part:

When he slowed down after being at this speed for awhile, he actually tried to get out of the car while it was still going almost 60mph, because at that point that speed felt like a standstill and he honestly thought he had stopped.