Bugatti Veyron in world's most expensive crash

[Rocky]

Jeremy Clarkson called the car ‘utterly, stunningly, jaw droppingly brilliant’. A Bugatti Veyron, one of the rarest and most powerful cars in the world, is involved in a 100mph crash in its first week on the road.

An as yet unnamed driver crashed a rented Bugatti Veyron on Sunday in what is being described as "the world's costliest road accident".

The £830,000 supercar, which Times columnist Jeremy Clarkson memorably described last year as being “as fast as a Hawker Hurricane” was travelling in the wet at speeds in the region of 100mph along a 40mph stretch of the B375 near Chertsey, Surrey when the driver lost control and collided with a Vauxhall Astra before ploughing into a 3ft bank.

The passenger of the Vauxhall was a pregnant woman who has since been released from hospital after tests.

The full extent of the damage to the Bugatti is still being assessed by specialist engineers, but witnesses describe ‘substantial’ portions of the bodywork as having been torn away by the impact.

The Veyron, the world's most expensive and fastest street-legal car, is one of a planned limited run of 300 examples, of which fewer than 100 have been so far built.

Early prototypes were rumoured to be unstable at high speeds and indeed a Bugatti test driver came close to crashing in the first public showing of the car at the Laguna Seca circuit in August 2003.

The owner of the vehicle, Kumar Soni, had paid a substantial premium for early delivery only a week before, with a view to renting the car as a £20,000 'driving experience'.

The driver at the centre of Sunday’s incident, initially reported as a rental customer but now believed to be the younger brother of the owner, may find that the experience could yet prove even more costly.

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/driving/article1478628.ece

 

[Rocky]

Here's a picture of minez that is undamaged (as I only drive it on Sundays out in the country), just so ya'll will know how it's supposed to look:

 

[ROMOSAPIEN9]

I own 2 of them.:wink2:

 

[the kid 05]

i think that cars design is ugly but the power is jaw dropping

 

[Warick]

Check this video out. Pretty impressive. This guy takes one for a spin up to the top speed of 253 mph.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x157l2_bugatti-veyron-at-top-speed

 

[MapleLeaf]

i think that cars design is ugly but the power is jaw dropping

...is out of the control of the industrial designer. Much of the shape of a high performance vehicle is determined by the forces the body and frame is subjected to. There really isn't much to design other than the colour.


As a one time car designer we often talked in studio about the high performance vehicles and how limiting they were.

It was easier to design a sheep in wolf's clothing than the other way around.

If a design was determined by the forces in a wind tunnel most of the world would be disappointed in the amorphous blobs that would be on the car dealer's showroom floors.

 

[notherbob]

Glad I'm not either the owner or the driver.

Don't know why but this reminds me that in 1890 there were only two automobiles in the entire state of Montana, both of them custom made, and they had a head-on collision. Go figure. I'll never understand people.

 

[MapleLeaf]

Glad I'm not either the owner or the driver.

Don't know why but this reminds me that in 1890 there were only two automobiles in the entire state of Montana, both of them custom made, and they had a head-on collision. Go figure. I'll never understand people.

...to drive in America were owned by two socialites in New York. Within hours of the two cars arriving in New York they collided with each other recording the first automobile accident in America.

The insurance business has never been the same since!

 

[Crown Royal]

This is like what happens when you buy an expensive pair of sunglasses.

I have never owned an expensive car, and likely never will. Cars = waste of cash, unless they are classics.