JEDDAH, 6 December 2006 — The Bugatti Veyron, a car laden with superlatives including fastest, most luxurious and most expensive, made its debut simultaneously in Riyadh and Jeddah on Monday night. “The car, which is favored by drivers both as a sports utility vehicle and for everyday use, is launched for the first time in the Middle East,” Ghassan Al-Sulaiman, president and CEO of Al-Ghassan Motors told a press conference at Lailaty Ballroom in Jeddah.
“We decided to launch it in both Riyadh and Jeddah in view of the strong impact the two cities make on the luxury segment of the automobile market,” said Al-Sulaiman.
“Despite the limited quantity that Bugatti produces of this model, we expect to get the largest share of the region’s market due to high demand,” he said, adding that the launch of Bugatti Veyron comes after a long wait and an endless series of tests with an extraordinary power and tremendous speed.”
A truly international car with parts selected for their engineering excellence and performance, the Veryon was described by Pierre-Henri Raphanel, official demonstration driver, as the “beauty and the beast.”
With an eight-liter W16 cylinder engine and a specially designed seven speed double clutch gearbox to a constant four-wheel drive, the car’s fuel consumption is about 4 mpg (1.7 kilometers per liter).
“I believe it is the best car ever built,” Raphanel said. “It can be driven as a Formula One car or as a daily commuter car. That was part of the design philosophy.” The Veyron has a top speed of 407 kph with acceleration from zero to 100 kph in 2.5 seconds yet has passed the Tokyo City test where it handled seven hours dawdling in traffic without overheating or any problems normally associated with a supercar in such conditions.
Julius Kruta, press officer for Bugatti, said that such was the flexibility of the Veyron that it was being favored and used as a commuter vehicle. “Far from being simply collectors’ cars, they log on average four times as much mileage as other supercars. We wanted the car not just as a supercar for a good day,” Kruta said.
The development of the Veyron passed through 17 prototypes and half a million kilometers of arduous and even destructive testing in varied climatic conditions. The carbon fiber body with massive aluminum substructures front and rear make it one of the safest cars to be in the event of an accident. It even passed the California crash tests standard, the toughest in the world.
The car’s debut was delayed by 18 months and eventually launched in March 2006. Kruta, said that the delay was caused by a reassessment of the goal to produce the very best car possible. “We had to look and see whether we had set our targets too high,” he said. Raphanel said that the challenges of producing a car that was 50 percent more powerful than any other road car and produced 100 percent more torque were entirely new. Enormous development work was focused on the gearbox to handle the power with complete reliability. “We simply would not deliver a car to our clients that was less than perfect,” he said.
The design and management team was reorganized, reinvigorated and after 90 percent of the design had been changed or modified the car was eventually brought onto the market, he added.
Only 300 Veyron cars will be built over four years of production. Since March this year, 40 units have been delivered with an anticipated total of 50 units. Kruta said that over the lifespan of the car, 10 percent of production had been earmarked for Saudi Arabia.
With a price tag of around SR6 million, the Veyron will be a rare sight on the streets of the Kingdom.
