Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4 Pur Sang

“Success in any endeavor requires single-minded attention to detail and total concentration.”.

So said Willie Sutton. Willie Sutton robbed a lot of banks. "You can't rob a bank on charm or personality", he'd say at one of his trials, and he didn't have much time for 'do-gooding'. He was just good at what he did.

Many can quote all the statistics for the Veyron. The 987 hp. The eight litre engine. The 16 cylinders in a W formation. The four turbos. The million euros needed to buy one. Everything about the car is superlative. The fastest accelerating. The greatest top speed (weeellllll, I know about the Aero TT, but, you know...). The most expensive. The fewest miles to the gallon.....

But the really superlative thing, was that it actually got made at all. And it was the drive and total devotion to it's production by Ferdinand Piëch that was the reason it did. Forget Lamborghini or Bentley, the real marque brand in the VAG empire is Bugatti. The last model to come from the Alsace factory was the fiendishly styled and rare EB110. A car that had side engine vents that resembled SNEB rocket launchers underneath a Harrier GR.3, and curious rhomboidal headlamps that neither smiled nor glowered. That car, was fantastically engineered with a chassis designed by aeronauticists and graphite fibre applied liberally.

So with the re-launch of the famous name, how to top a car like that? Piëch had more or less made a public promise that the forthcoming product would be the the ultimate automobile expression. And with that thinking, the huge resources of the Volkswagen group were diverted to make sure that this would be so. Giving it 4WD would allow fantastic response from the get-go, but also very tractable in conditions when other cars like the rear wheel drive Carrera GT or SLR would give up. The DSG gearbox was at the time, the fastest shifting unit in production. But the car could be navigated by an elderly spinster on an expedition to the shops. It was built to eclipse it's competitiors in performance and to be as easy to drive as the base Golf. It has computer controlled hydraulics that constantly monitor the undulating tarmac. Active diffusors keep the car optimally planted to the ground. Nothing is left wanting in pursuit of performance. Yet, for the multi-millionaires rich enough to garage one, extra luxuries like heated side mirrors and a bespoke PDA that functions as your GPS route guidance (sat-nav is built into the rear view mirror), mean this shape-shifting machine can give a McLaren F1 a headstart to 120mph, yet still beat it to 200mph. And do it in a measure of comfort. Then it will do it again and again. Unlike other supercars that need a lot of TLC, you can, like Stefan Roser, keep your loafers on, and just make sure it's topped up with fuel.

The Veyron is possibly the most densely engineered, evolved car ever made. To see one, you'll be quietly impressed by it's relatively small dimensions. The production car has 10 radiators. The pre-prod testers had 27. To engineer out 17 radiators, admittedly of varying sizes, is an incredible feat. To get the power they needed for the car, with the space they had available, meant building from scratch an engine that would need huge displacement, but also turbochargers. And space for the turbos to exist. And space for them to be cooled. A unique format, staggering the cylinders to fit the space available, and a narrow angle for the single cranskshaft, evolved into the W16. The exhausts run to 1,000 degrees celcius.....

A Pagani Zonda may be more extravagant to the naked eye. A McLaren F1 has sporting pedigree. Bar none. An SLR at full rat-a-tat-tat is theatre. But the Veyron is the staggering automotive achievement of our time.

Is this the apex of the petrol supercar? In watching a Bugatti Veyron, are you looking at what will soon be an automotive dinosaur? I hope not. But it still makes me think about about what our cars will look like, sound like, in the future. I heard two Murcielagos' start up this evening within seconds of each other. With their wild styling and the incredible aural symphony, I started shuddering at the thought of my friend's Honda Insight. What a horrid little thing.

Form, as they say, follows function. But how will our cars look in the future? What is certain is that by and large, like the quote above implies, we'll get the car designs that reflect the age we'll live in....