Bugatti Veyron Vitesse 2012-2015 review

Climb aboard and the first thing you notice is that the bucket seats are set reassuringly low and are brilliantly supportive. Look ahead, and your eye is drawn to the exquisite controls and instruments, and especially the centre console, which is made from carbonfibre and titanium.

The engine roars in to life with a pleasant, engaging tone, although it is nowhere near as raw as the numbers may suggest. Roof off, spoiler up, it delivers a note you can always enjoy without it ever feeling like it is intruding. The turbos whoop and woosh rather like you’d imagine an angry dragon too, but never with anything approaching ferocity. Even so, there’s no question it can set the hairs on your neck upwards is you feel inclined to drop a gear or two and go.

That’s a theme that rings true for pretty much the whole experience of driving a Veyron – it is thrilling, but not daunting, encouraging, not overwhelming. Sure, even in ‘normal’ mode (their name for it, not ours – very few people would describe anything about this car as normal) it accelerates on and on if you ask it to (all the too around 235mph before the torque delivery levels out), but although it is undoubtedly very fast, the power and torque are delivered in a largely undramatic way. Pedal feel under braking, too, is exquisite.

Likewise, the Vitesse never feels like a large car. While its dimensions suggest otherwise, the supremely accurate steering gives you the confidence to thread it down twisty roads just as you would any other car, while the refinement, even roof down but with the front and rear deflectors in place, cossets you from everything but tyre roar on bad road surfaces, which not even the VW Group’s finest engineers have managed to fully tame.

If chopping the roof off has introduced any ride or handling compromises, they’re not evident. The Vitesse’s extra weight and removable roof over the Supersport mean that the spring, damper and anti-roll bar rates have all been altered, but it still rides with the firm precision of a mid-engined supercar, and remains supple even if you up the speed. No, we didn’t try it in full-blown track mode on anything other than a high-speed bowl, but we went as fast as most mortals would dare. 

The Vitesse has a natural tendency to understeer that can be neutered by trailing the throttle into bends, but if you go that route you need to do so with discipline.