Bugatti Veyron
It's from 2005, before you were born.
- Iconic generation
- 2005 Veyron 16.4
- Origin
- Molsheim, France
- Engine
- 8.0L quad-turbocharged W16
- Power
- 987 hp (1,001 PS)
- 0–60 mph
- approx. 2.5 sec
- Top speed
- 253 mph (407 km/h)
- Production
- 2005–2015 (450 total, all variants)
- Price when new
- approx. $1.7 million (US)
About
As of 2026, it's 21 years old.
At the turn of the millennium, Volkswagen Group chairman Ferdinand Piëch set his engineers an apparently impossible challenge: build a car with 1,000 horsepower that could exceed 250mph and still be civilised enough to drive to the opera. Most thought it couldn't be done. It nearly broke Bugatti to do it, but they did it.
The Veyron's heart is a preposterous 8.0-litre, quad-turbocharged W16 engine, essentially two V8s fused together, fed by ten radiators and breathing through enough cooling to chill a small building. At full speed it would drain its fuel tank in around 12 minutes and shred a set of special tyres almost as fast. To reach top speed you needed a second key and a long, brave runway.
It rewrote the record books as the fastest production car in the world and the first to crack both the 1,000-horsepower and 250mph barriers, all while being air-conditioned, comfortable, and reasonably easy to drive. It was a hypercar with the manners of a luxury saloon, a genuinely new category.
Reportedly, Volkswagen lost money on every single Veyron despite the seven-figure price tag, because the engineering was so extreme it was practically a public-works project. It stands as one of the great triumphs of automotive ambition: the moment a giant car company decided to build the impossible, just to prove it could.
Bugatti Veyron through the years
The impossible brief
VW boss Ferdinand Piëch demands a 1,000hp, 250mph luxury hypercar.
Veyron enters production
The W16 hypercar arrives as the fastest, most powerful production car on Earth.
Records shattered
It becomes the first production car to break both 1,000hp and 250mph.
Super Sport
A 1,200hp Super Sport pushes the record beyond 267mph.
Production ends
After 450 cars across all variants, the Veyron retires, succeeded by the Chiron.
