2008 Bugatti Veyron Super Ultra Sports Car Raw Power And Looks Rolled Into One on 2040-cars

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Watch a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport hit 246 mph during road rally

The Bugatti Veyron might be getting on in years, but it's still an engineering marvel capable of truly insane velocity. There are tons of videos of the Veyron doing its super-high-speed trick of reaching 200 miles per hour with seemingly no effort. But do you know how much ground the coupe is actually covering at full chat? Let's just say it's mighty impressive.
According to the YouTube description, this video was shot at the 2014 Sun Valley Road Rally in Idaho. The event shut down a portion of highway and allowed cars to hurtle down that stretch at ludicrous speeds, and a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport with 1,200 horsepower on hand showed the crowd what fast really looked like. Thankfully, the organizers monitored the vehicles' speed, confirming that this supercar managed a massive 246.4 miles per hour.
The way that the Veyron reaches that momentum is just as impressive, though. At first, all you see is a fast-moving white spec, but it doesn't sound like a car. It has more of the constant note of a jet but with a little audible grumble as it streaks by. Scroll down to see what nearly 250 mph looks like on a deserted stretch of highway.

Bugatti Chiron Sport Edition Noire Sportive marks the production halfway point

For Bugatti, possibly only for Bugatti, a 1,479-horsepower coupe with a quad-turbocharged 8.0-liter W16 is just the starting point. Bugatti unveiled the Chiron in 2016 with the intent of building 500 examples, and four years later, 250 units and numerous extraordinary limited-editions have been crafted. To mark the occasion, Bugatti will show No. 250, a Chiron Sport Edition Noire Sportive, at the 2020 Geneva International Auto Show, where it all began. Near the end of 2019, Bugatti announced two new blacked-out Chirons, one called the Chiron Noire Elegance and the other called the Chiron Noire Sportive. The Elegance model exhibits a reflective gloss, while the Sportive has a muted matte exterior. Backing up the Noire designation, the Sportive model goes completely black, with nearly nothing left to show off any sort of metallic sparkle. The Elegance, however, looks a bit more dressed up with aluminum and silver accents. Both feature Noire script graphics, including on the underside of the rear wing. The Noire models are limited to 20 examples total, and No. 250 will surely be one of the most interesting of the bunch. The Noire Elegance and Sportive follow in the footsteps of Bugatti's (and the world's) most expensive release, the Bugatti La Voiture Noire. A coachbuilt homage to the Bugatti 57 SC Atlantic, the La Voiture Noire reportedly cost more than $18 million, with fees and taxes factored in. It was limited to only one example, and it was only one of numerous special launches that spawned from the Chiron. In addition to the base Chiron, Bugatti has also released the lighter and sharper Chiron Sport, on which the car seen here is based. Then there was the Chiron-based Divo "for the bends," and then came the Chiron Super Sports 300+ to honor the car that broke the 300-mph barrier. Other special editions included the 110 ans Bugatti Chiron to honor the company's history and the Bugatti Centodieci that honors the Bugatti EB110 supercar. So much honor. For only having one car in its lineup, Bugatti sure has made a lot of different vehicles, and we recently found out it could have been more. In an Autoblog exclusive, we learned Bugatti also planned two never-before-seen coupes that would have been marketed alongside the Chiron. Unfortunately, they never made it through to see production. With 250 produced, only 250 remain, and their availability is getting increasingly more scarce.

Bugatti Vision Le Mans designer's concept is ion-powered

Bugatti hasn't raced since the middle of the 1990s when Romano Artioli, its former owner, built an EB110 for the IMSA GT series and converted a second example to Le Mans specifications. The company is not actively planning a return to the track, don't expect to see a Chiron compete in 2020, but it still embraces its vast motorsport heritage, so one of its youngest designers dedicated his thesis to exploring what form a comeback could take. The Vision Le Mans concept shown in renderings puts a forward-thinking spin on the Type 35. Max Lask, a talented student who recently graduated from the Brunswick University of Art in Germany, explained his goal was not to create a retro-styled racer. That would have been too easy. Instead, he wanted to design a car that would be as advanced in 2050 as the Type 35 was when it made its debut at the 1924 Grand Prix of Lyon. There's a futuristic interpretation of Bugatti's horseshoe-shaped grille up front, but that's where the similarities between the Vision Le Mans concept and current members of the automaker's range end. The rest of the car is an ode to the principles of aerodynamics. Every wing, vent, fin, and scoop serves a specific purpose. Speculating what Le Mans-bound race cars will run on in 2050 required intense mental gymnastics. Motorsport is often at the forefront of innovation, so even 2020's most advanced technologies will look comically obsolete in 30 years. To that end, Lask envisioned a powertrain that runs on ions — and not the Saturn kind. It sounds far-fetched, but spacecraft already use xenon ion thrusters, and MIT successfully tested an ion-powered plane, so the technology exists. In his thesis, Lask opined it could sooner or later trickle down to the automotive industry. Bugatti stressed the Vision Le Mans concept is a one-off project Lask created to complete his design program, and it's not a preview of an upcoming model. While the French company is rooted in racing — the aforementioned Type 35 earned over 2,000 victories between 1924 and 1930 — the Circuit de La Sarthe isn't currently on the company's radar. Related Video: