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Bugatti Veyron 16.4 – Road Test – Auto Reviews – Car and Driver
Driving a Bugatti Veyron is like carrying a 14.6-foot-long open wallet that is spewing 50-dollar bills. Drivers rush up from behind, tailgating before swerving into either of the Veyron’s rear-three-quarter blind spots, where they hang ape-like out of windows to snap photos with their cell phones. They won’t leave, either, because they know the Bugatti, averaging 11 mpg, can’t go far without refueling and that its driver will soon need to take a minute to compose himself. And when you open the Veyron’s door to exit—a gymnastic feat that requires grabbing one of your own ankles to drag it across that huge, hot sill—you will be greeted by 5 to 15 persons wielding cameras and asking questions. If you’re wearing shorts or a skirt, here’s a tip: Wear underwear.
Describing hyperbole with hyperbole is not a useful pursuit. In the Veyron’s case, the facts are sufficient. Let us look at a few:
It takes five weeks to build each car. Counting the heater core, the Veyron has 12 radiators. Sixty mph is yours in 2.5 seconds. The Bug will reach 150 mph 8.3 seconds
sooner than a Nissan GT-R. At its top speed of 253 mph [
, November 2005], it is traveling 371 feet per second and will empty its 26.4-gallon tank in 19 minutes. If you can’t locate fuel of 93 octane or higher, your dealer must detune the engine. Service, in general, will be expensive because it takes two persons—one of whom won’t be you—to remove the rear bodywork just to get
at the engine. Four of this car’s Michelin PAX Pilots will set you back $25,000. If they’re mounted on wheels—a process undertaken only in France—well, that’s $70,000. The hydraulic rams that raise the rear wing at 137 mph are identical to those that raise flaps on aircraft. During the Veyron’s prototype days, a bird crashed through its aluminum grille—the car was humming along at 205 mph—so now the grille is titanium. The windows automatically rise and lock in place at 93 mph so your dog doesn’t lose his tongue. You thought the engine made
? Nope. “They all make more than 1010,” says Bugatti’s Jens Schulenburg, who works in the “Gesamtfahrzeugentwicklung” department.
Over Labor Day weekend, we drove the Veyron to the 5000-car Kruse Auction in Auburn, Indiana, where it could repose amongst other supercars and elicit reactions from enthusiasts whose wallets were as wide as the Bugatti’s doorsills. We parked next to a racing-blue 1948 Talbot-Lago. A French car next to a French car. But the Bugatti killed all interest in the magnificent Talbot, making us feel sorry for its owner. So we parked in a line of a dozen Lamborghinis. This lasted 15 minutes before the Lambo salesman began looking ill. “We’re trying to sell here,” he pleaded. “You’re
killing us.”
“I’ll bet that car has more moves than a monkey on 18 feet of grapevine,” said one.
“If that’s your car,” said a blonde, “I’ll marry you.”
“That thing’ll rip your nuts off,” opined a teenager with numerous facial piercings.
“It’s like a good movie,” said another. “Contains violence, obscenity, possible nudity.” (We’re not sure what that meant.)
“I do believe this is the most beautiful car I have ever seen,” said a Southern belle who’d driven to Auburn in her Ford GT.
They ask questions, too. Mostly, “What happens when you flatten the accelerator pedal?” Here’s the best we can explain it. From rest, the car leaves civilly, gentlemanly, with almost no wheelspin or tire squeal. It accelerates briskly for roughly one second, until the turbos understand that you mean business. Then there is a deafening roar, the nose lifts, and the car feels as if it’s making a serious attempt to claw itself into the air. The first time you’re about three seconds into this experiment, you, too, will lift. For one thing, you’ll be close to rear-ending a family in a Ford Explorer. For another, you’ll need a moment to recalibrate what you’ve hitherto considered cheek-rippling forward thrust. Analogies, here, are often futile, but in the time it takes a thundering Audi S8 to attain 60 mph, the Veyron will be going 100.
The somewhat disappointing news is that despite accurate, nicely weighted steering and 1.00 g of skidpad grip, the car isn’t particularly nimble in the hills, where it is taxed by its 4486-pound heft. It feels more like a Benz SL63 AMG than, say, a BMW M3.
The Veyron’s weird shifter, which we named Klaatu, is as alien as the rest of the car. Push down for park. Push once to the right for drive. Twice to the right for sport mode. Left for neutral. Left and down for reverse. No matter where you shove it, it instantly returns to its original position, la BMW turn signals. This is annoying, but resist the urge to abuse any gears. A new transmission costs $123,200. Speaking of abuse, within the 366-page hardcover owner’s manual, there are 190 boxed messages headlined “WARNING!”
Article source:
Top Gear – Bugatti Veyron top speed test – BBC
Racing Under the Radar – Sport – Auto Reviews – Car and Driver
This just in: Life isn’t fair. While you toil at your job—behind a desk, a cash register, a McDonald’s counter—there are people out there making a living driving race cars.
Yes, of course, you’re aware of that. Last year
Sports Illustrated pegged NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s annual income at $25,761,830, ranking ninth among U.S. sports celebrities, just ahead of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick’s $25,400,000, a sum that apparently did not include dogfighting revenue from his Bad Newz Kennels, which might have vaulted him right past Junior.
And even in this stratified atmosphere, life isn’t fair here, either. Formula 1 rookie wonder Lewis Hamilton, winning races for McLaren-Mercedes, reportedly began the season at an annual salary amounting to $350,000, but given several astonishing wins and the surprise fact that he was leading in championship points at midseason, McLaren generously bumped that to $400,000. Meanwhile, in 2006, NASCAR Nextel Cup driver Dale Jarrett was lured to drive a
for Michael Waltrip Racing in a two-year deal worth what several sources pegged at $20 million. Twenty-two races into the ’07 season, Jarrett was 40th in points, with an average finish of 33rd. But, hey, a guy’s gotta live, right?
There are, however, people you’ve never heard of making a good living driving race cars. We went looking for some examples, with several modest criteria: (1) He or she could not have a rich daddy paying the bills (sorry, Buckshot Jones!); (2) he or she had to be of an age to face genuine adult-related responsibilities, such as paying mortgages and liquor bills; and (3) he or she had to be good—a superstar in a smaller galaxy.
Randy Pobst: Sports Cars A little ad in a shopping newspaper in Melbourne, Florida, caught Randy Pobst’s eye and changed his life. It said: “Race your own car: $5.” It was 1977, and Pobst was 19. He liked cars, but he didn’t know much about them. He was, at that moment, checking out a used Datsun 510 in
Auto Trader.
“I could see in the picture that it had a sway bar hanging down. When I went to look at it, the shocks and the springs were painted orange. How could a car with a sway bar and orange shocks and springs not be fast? I bought it.”
Then he took his Datsun to that advertised autocross, in the parking lot of a mall, and beat the class champion. “It just lit up every nerve in my body. The idea of driving a car as fast as it would go—I didn’t care if it was on a small track in a parking lot. But that day, something grabbed me by the throat and said, ‘You must race!’ I never dreamed of being a professional race-car driver. But I thought I was pretty good—there are two things every man thinks he’s good at, and one of them is driving—so I raced every autocross I could find.”
In 1981, he borrowed his brother’s Opel Manta and drove it to the Sports Car Club of America’s annual autocross nationals, in Salina, Kansas. “And I almost won the damn thing. I had the fastest time, but I got a penalty for hitting a pylon.”
Pobst was in the process of getting a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Central Florida—he graduated with a 3.52 grade-point average—but he knew he was just going through the motions. “I made a couple of halfhearted attempts to find a job in accounting,” he said, but instead landed a job with a Dodge traveling road show that demonstrated Shelby Chargers and Daytona Turbos on makeshift courses. “For two years, I saved every penny I made.”
In 1985, he decided to go racing and bought a
. He drove it in the compact class of the IMSA Firestone Firehawk Series and in the Volkswagen Cup. So Pobst was 27 the first time he turned a wheel on a road course. “I knew how to drive, but I knew nothing about fender-to-fender racing.” He learned quickly, several of the lessons administered by the racing Hacker brothers, known for teaming up on unsuspecting rookies like Pobst. “They called them the Hacker Express. Paul Hacker was the judge, jury, and executioner. But you know what? If you got hit by Paul Hacker, you probably deserved it.” In his first road race, Pobst finished second, losing by a foot.
Pobst raced his own car for four years, existing on prize money, small sponsorships, and help from his then-wife and frequent co-driver, Linda. “But by the end of 1988, I was out of money, and I even owed my dad for helping me out. It forced me to start looking for rides as a driver, not a driver/owner. So I started calling around, and there were a few people willing to hire me.” Among them was T.C. Kline Racing of Ohio. Kline’s faith in Pobst led to a long and successful partnership. “T.C. was the first person to pay me to drive his car.” It barely covered expenses, Pobst recalled, but it was a start. With Honda backing, they did very well in the Firehawk series, and in 1995, Pobst ventured into the North American Touring Car Championship. (That same year, he squeezed in a second-place finish in
Car and Driver’ s .) In 1996, Pobst won the NATCC with five wins and had five poles.
2012 Hyundai Veloster Photos and Info: Hyundai Veloster News – Car and Driver
The 2012 Veloster Hyundai is showing at the is the result of the company asking itself the question, “Why can’t we have two coupes?” The rear-wheel-drive
does leave room in the lineup for a playful front-drive model targeting the likes of the Mini Cooper and Scion tC. That slot in the lineup is now filled by a compact five-seat hatchback that looks like a Honda CR-Z with a glandular problem.
The cause of the Veloster’s oddness is an asymmetrical body that makes the car appear slightly disfigured. On the driver’s side, the little car has a single normal door, while on the passenger side there are two, which really makes it a coupe in idea only. Form following function usually results in less-strange solutions, but the rear door is practical and it opens to a surprisingly large rear seat. If you’re worried about how that will affect the British—and who isn’t?—don’t. Right-hand-drive markets will get a four-door Veloster. (Add in the hatchback and they’ll technically get a five-door to our, uh, four-door hatch.) Around back, the Veloster has a Honda CR-Z–style two-piece glass hatch that is intended to aid rear visibility, although the crossbar dividing the panes in such arrangements usually hinders the view instead.
Like Many Mutants, Familiar Underneath
Under the skin, the Veloster is largely conventional, with the exception of its optional dual-clutch automatic transmission, Hyundai’s first such gearbox. A strut front suspension and a twist-beam rear hold standard 17-inch wheels or optional 18s on a 104.3-inch wheelbase (the new Elantra’s wheelbase is two inches longer). Powering the Veloster is a direct-injection 1.6-liter four-cylinder that makes 138 hp and 123 lb-ft of torque.
a 210-hp turbocharged version of the same engine will make it to European models late this year, and we figure that we’ll get it, too. Transferring the go to the front wheels (despite the crossover-ish profile, all-wheel drive will not be available) will be a six-speed manual and the aforementioned six-speed dual-clutch automatic; manual models are said to weigh in at a surprisingly light 2600 pounds, with the dual-clutch version tipping the scales at 2650. Hyundai claims that the Veloster will achieve up to 40 mpg on the EPA highway cycle.
While the mechanicals may be conservative, the electronics in the Veloster take a small step into the future of in-car telematics. A seven-inch touch-screen is standard even if you don’t opt for navigation. In addition to storage for music, pictures, and video—all easily uploaded through a USB input—it comes equipped with Pandora internet radio fed through a connection with the driver’s smartphone. Other possibilities include an RCA jack and a 115-volt outlet that allow for gaming consoles to be plugged in and played while the Veloster is in park—because
is the new campfire, you know.
, Hyundai’s version of GM’s OnStar crash, safety, vehicle diagnostics, and turn-by-turn navigation service, will be standard and will come with a temporary free subscription.
Pricing has not been announced, but considering the vehicles that Hyundai lists as the Veloster’s competition, base versions likely will start around $16,000, with a loaded-up Veloster rising toward $21,000. While the $2000 buffer that will leave between the Veloster and the Genesis coupe is slim, we can’t imagine too many people will cross-shop the two.
How well do people know their insurance policy
A recent RSA Canada Automobile Insurance survey using Leger Marketing’s web panel was commissioned by leading car, home and business insurers revealed that most Canadians do not entirely understand their insurance policy.
The said survey which also revealed purchasing habits and general knowledge of auto insurance among Canadians showed that only 15 percent of the surveyed population really knows what their policy is covering and not.
Auto insurance fine prints are important statement that has to be read moreover understood by consumers. There are several issues in auto insurance policies that consumers need to be fully aware of. With this Canadian drivers need to pull some extra efforts to hone their knowledge about their own insurance policies.
According to the Vice President of Claims and Corporate Services at RSA it is highly important for drivers to understand what they are insured for. This way they can make certain that their auto insurance policy covers and fits their needs.
There are many ways on how people can widen their horizon of understanding auto insurance policies. One of these ways is through researching by your own. Reliable information can be found in the internet which is the fastest way to get information. Another is through their insurance brokers. By consulting insurance brokers, consumers can be guided about how much coverage to avail and what kind of coverage to get. In addition to this brokers can also guide consumers about the proper ways on how they can reduce the price they are to pay for their auto insurance policies.
Understanding insurance policy is one way to protect consumers’ investments. Insurance is one major way that can help people bring their life back to normal after any unfortunate incident on the road thus consumers need to take time to understand auto insurance policies. With the survey results everyone not just Canadian drivers must start filling in the gaps of their knowledge about their auto insurance coverage.
To help people get to know their insurance better RSA shares some of the basic knowledge drivers should know about auto insurance policies. First increasing deductibles can help reduce consumers’ insurance premiums. Deductibles are the amount consumers pay for a covered loss. Second if your annual mileage is low you may be given lower premium rates since the lesser you drive the lesser is the chance for you to get involved in accidents. Third insuring more than one vehicle in the same insurance company can earn consumers some discounts.