Words: Ravi Chandnani
We’ve all been on train journeys, often watching the world go by through the window, reading an automotive magazine like TURBOCHARGED, or mindlessly scrolling through social media. But that is not what one Mr Ferdinand Karl Piëch did on a particular train ride in Japan in 1997. The then CEO and Chairman of the Volkswagen Group was busy scribbling an idea of an engine on an envelope. The squiggly lines and numbers gave the illusion of a child’s imagination; however, it was a blueprint that changed the automotive world.
Piëch’s idea was to make an eighteen-cylinder engine that would then power a car which would redefine luxury, comfort, speed, and automotive innovation. Hence, in 1998, the Volkswagen Group acquired the rights for the Bugatti name from the erstwhile Italian owner and got straight to bringing the CEO’s vision to life.
Soon after the acquisition, in 1999, Bugatti showed up at the Paris Motor Show with a sleek and futuristic concept donning the legendary French monogram. But this was just a teaser. Behind the scenes engineers and designers were busy sculpting and fine-tuning Piëch’s idea, which eventually resulted in not one, not two, not three, but four concepts in a mere two-year window. One among the four was a four-door saloon concept, the EB218 that featured an eighteen-cylinder engine.
The fourth concept, code-named EB 18/4, where 18 stood for the eighteen cylinders, was designed by the exceptionally talented duo of Hartmut Warkuß and Jozef Kabaň. The EB 18/4 was the concept that became the canvas for the car we all know today. The efforts and passion of an engineer’s idea resulted in a car that changed the automotive landscape forever. After all, Piëch’s reference came directly from the words of Ettore Bugatti – “If it’s comparable, it’s not a Bugatti.”
At the 2000 Paris Motor Show, a new concept, the EB 16.4 Veyron, was showcased, and just a year later, Bugatti announced its intent to put the car into production. And for the next four years, the Bugatti team moved mountains to align the stars and create history in the form of the Veyron 16.4, which was launched in 2005, although it now featured an engine that had only sixteen cylinders and not eighteen like the earlier concepts.
Prior to the Veyron 16.4, there were icons like the Jaguar XJ220 and the McLaren F1, cars that were truly the rightful owners of the supercar tag; however, Bugatti did not play in the same field. This French icon, resurrected by the Germans, changed the game itself. Because the Veyron 16.4 accelerated way ahead of those English cars and birthed a new segment.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 was the creator of the hypercar segment. It was not just a powerhouse of engineering; it was pure art on wheels, just the way Ettore Bugatti would have done it. The massive 8.0-litre W16 may have lost two cylinders on the way to production, but it was still a powerhouse with four giant turbochargers, the 16-cylinder configuration a first in the world in a production car, that helped it breathe fire in the form of 1,001PS and 1,250Nm. It highlighted the fact that an engineer can be the driving force behind automotive excellence and innovation. The Veyron 16.4 was not just a scintillating automotive masterpiece, it was also the first to cross the 400kmph mark, do 0-100kmph in less than 3 seconds while the driver and a passenger sat in the lap of luxury.
After all, it is no small feat to match the take-off speed of the world’s fastest commercial jetliner ever – the Concorde and that too in utmost comfort. The Veyron became a legend in just a decade and was iterated in several limited editions that warrant a story of their own. On its anniversary, we would like to wish Le Créateur (the Creator) of the hypercar segment a happy twentieth birthday!
