Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey Eddie here, before we get started, I wanted
Speaker 1: you to know that you can listen to Car Show
Speaker 1: add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. You'll also
Speaker 1: get access to detours, bonus episodes of Car Show where
Speaker 1: we go for extended drives, play outtakes, and more fine
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus on the Car Show page in Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or at Pushkin dot Fm. The year is two thousand
Speaker 1: and five. I'm thirty four years old and on assignment
Speaker 1: for Men's Journal, a magazine dedicated to the fantasies that
Speaker 1: prowl the hallways of young men's minds. Climbing everest, eating fugu,
Speaker 1: dazzling women's old factories with your new bottled musk. That
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. My brief, then, is fittingly fantastical. I
Speaker 1: am to drive a brand new high performance car for
Speaker 1: two days down the California Coast from Carmel by the
Speaker 1: Sea on the Monterey Peninsula down to the La Basin,
Speaker 1: then report back. I can do this, I told myself.
Speaker 1: My route would include America's most celebrated coastal road, California
Speaker 1: Highway One aka the Pacific Coast Highway, the mythical PC
Speaker 1: IF you've driven it, you know that PC is an
Speaker 1: amazing piece of winding, rhythmic asphalt. It unfolds like a
Speaker 1: fable under a great canopy of redwoods. It is perfect
Speaker 1: for small, nimble sports cars like Mazdamiata's and Subaru br Z's,
Speaker 1: where power is less critical than handling and flow. But
Speaker 1: the car I was driving that day in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five felt neutered and bridled on PC's densely treed switchbacks,
Speaker 1: too wide, too powerful, too magnetize to the pavement. I
Speaker 1: was never really able to incork it. There was two
Speaker 1: little distance between the curves to exercise this car, and
Speaker 1: I was growing frustrated. Then south of San Luis Obispo,
Speaker 1: I drove Inland on the one oh one four lanes
Speaker 1: of Primo Callie Concrete. I opened it up. Now, in
Speaker 1: most really fast cars, when you hit the accelerator, the
Speaker 1: scenery blurs and the cars you pass received gracefully in
Speaker 1: your rear view mirror. But when I hit the gas
Speaker 1: in this car, the scenery didn't blur. It bent in
Speaker 1: my vertiguously linear ascent to the upper reaches of the spedometer.
Speaker 1: The cars I passed didn't recede in any graceful paget No,
Speaker 1: the cars behind me just disappeared, vaporized, not even specs
Speaker 1: in the mirror. It was low scale time travel, a
Speaker 1: kind of hyperspace effect. The car I was driving the one,
Speaker 1: the only Bugatti Veyron. I'm Eddie Alterman in this is
Speaker 1: Car Show. In this episode, we will explore the Bugatti
Speaker 1: Veyron and how it was able to break every automotive
Speaker 1: barrier that ever existed, and some human barriers too. It
Speaker 1: had a thousand and one horsepower, a thousand at a
Speaker 1: time when the top series production Ferrari had five hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen. It costs more than one million dollars to
Speaker 1: that Ferrari's paltry two hundred and fifteen thousand, and it
Speaker 1: radically re oriented our relationship to speed. The Veyron is
Speaker 1: what happens when unlimited money and colossal ego meet the
Speaker 1: hardest automotive engineering questions ever raised. That drive down PC
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five wasn't my first encounter with
Speaker 1: the Veyron. I saw the car in person a good
Speaker 1: two years before that road trip, but in much the
Speaker 1: same setting. Carwheek is officially bad. The deafening sounds of
Speaker 1: classic cars taking center stage on Alvarado's rail, exciting car
Speaker 1: enthusiasts of all ages. Every year, the Monterey Peninsula hosts
Speaker 1: a vintage car celebration known as Car Week. My friend
Speaker 1: Mercedes Benz Pierre Supremo Rob Moran calls this week cars
Speaker 1: at their best, people at their worst, and indeed it
Speaker 1: is a miasma of obscene wealth, jaw dropping cars, and
Speaker 1: state of the art plastic surgery. The acne of Monterey
Speaker 1: Car Week is the Pebble Beach concord to elegance that
Speaker 1: happens on Sunday, but Friday and Saturday are dominated by
Speaker 1: the vintage car races at WeatherTech Raceway, right over the
Speaker 1: hill from Pebble Beach. When I got to the racetrack
Speaker 1: that Saturday, I saw a huge dove gray shipping container
Speaker 1: with the burgundy Bugatti logo on its side. This was
Speaker 1: to be the first public running of the Veyron, the
Speaker 1: first demonstration of its metaphysical capabilities. The assembled journalist had
Speaker 1: popped their popcorn. The moment was vibrating with anticipation. The
Speaker 1: Veyron made its way onto the track. From where I
Speaker 1: was standing on the backstraight leading into turn one, I
Speaker 1: saw the black and red coop streak by sounding like
Speaker 1: some chimera of an F eighteen and a rhinoceros. It
Speaker 1: cleaved the air, It just reeked of lethality, and then
Speaker 1: instead of making the left hand corner and staying on
Speaker 1: the track, it spun right into the gravel track, a
Speaker 1: nimbus of tawny dust. This was highly embarrassing to the
Speaker 1: man in charge of Bugatti's parent company, the Volkswagen Group,
Speaker 1: because the Veyron was a product of his monomaniacal vision.
Speaker 1: He fired just about everyone associated with that moderate misshapp
Speaker 1: and installed a new team to bring the Veyron to
Speaker 1: the road. The man's name was doctor Ferdinand Peck. He
Speaker 1: cut and thrust his way through his family's corporate labyrinth
Speaker 1: to become chairman of the Volkswagen Group. Once there, he
Speaker 1: built it into the greatest carmaking juggernaut the world had
Speaker 1: ever seen. It made nineteen fifties general motors look like
Speaker 1: young brands. To Volkswagen and Audie. He added Bentley, Lamborghini,
Speaker 1: Portia and Bugatti. He was a slight but fearsome man.
Speaker 1: He looked like a German tank commander, ice blue eyes,
Speaker 1: close crops, scalp very deliberate in his small economical movements.
Speaker 1: Tom McDonald, the former head of VW Group PR in
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties, worked closely with PC and experienced
Speaker 1: his unique management style. His rule was law. He fired
Speaker 1: more of his direct reports, let's say, than probably any
Speaker 1: other executive in the history of the automotive industry. Do
Speaker 1: you remember the first time you met him. Yes, we
Speaker 1: were doing an Audi five thousand pre dealer meeting before
Speaker 1: the launch and I met him there and he had
Speaker 1: this very early I would say, weird look. Somebody called
Speaker 1: it Betty Davis eyes. I mean, he had this strange
Speaker 1: look on his face, and he'd be talking to you
Speaker 1: and he'd turn away and you kind of thought, well,
Speaker 1: am I done as he finished or what. Tom was
Speaker 1: the head of PR for the Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche
Speaker 1: brands when the OUTI five thousand started becoming notorious for
Speaker 1: the phenomenon of unintended acceleration, that is, going when it's
Speaker 1: driver thought she was stopping. Great car, very advanced, and
Speaker 1: suddenly in a pot of very hot water, people were
Speaker 1: driving them into swimming pools. People were getting hit. Here's
Speaker 1: how PK, the head of Audie at the time reacted
Speaker 1: to the issue. So p was getting involved at the
Speaker 1: very highest level and it became an absolute nightmare. Had
Speaker 1: to go over to Germany several times to give her
Speaker 1: presentation to PK and the board. What the status was,
Speaker 1: what the PR, what our communication strategy was, what were
Speaker 1: we doing offset it from an engineering point of view,
Speaker 1: from a PR point of view, a marketing advertise point
Speaker 1: of view. And Pier was saying there and he'd listen
Speaker 1: and listen and as system, the problem is your stupid
Speaker 1: Americans don't know how to drive. Oh no, holy crap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well no, sir, It's not that. P rarely spoke. He
Speaker 1: never carried cash. Reports vary, but he sired either twelve
Speaker 1: or thirteen children from four women. He once threatened to
Speaker 1: fire all of VW's body engineers if they didn't get
Speaker 1: the tolerances between the body panels on their cars down
Speaker 1: to an exceedingly tight three millimeters in six weeks. He
Speaker 1: was obsessive, demanding, strange, and antisocial. Suffice it to say
Speaker 1: that he didn't have many arguments with underlings. This P guy. Now,
Speaker 1: forgive me if I go off piece here for a moment.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to celebrate him as a person. This
Speaker 1: is a version of the artist conundrum applied to carmaking.
Speaker 1: Artists have been forgiven for nauseating behavior because we have
Speaker 1: long value the public output more than the private interpersonal damage.
Speaker 1: That's changing. Finally, you won't see many more Bill Cosby's
Speaker 1: stand up specials on HBO. We have to confront p
Speaker 1: K the same way we have to square the artist
Speaker 1: against the art. But there's very little recourse when someone's dead.
Speaker 1: So at this moment, the question that most interests me
Speaker 1: is can we get p X kind of brilliance without
Speaker 1: the antisocial behavior. I don't know if we can. It's
Speaker 1: tied to power and the unbridling of social limits it affords. Now,
Speaker 1: we have no record of any specific p X trespasses.
Speaker 1: People didn't talk about him, and he rarely did interviews.
Speaker 1: But stories like the one Tom told aren't great stupid
Speaker 1: American driver. Just as in good marketing, imperiousness enables the
Speaker 1: vision and what Piek wanted to build. The car he
Speaker 1: invested with all his power and brilliance would be nothing
Speaker 1: less than the capstone of his career. It would be
Speaker 1: hard to beat what he'd already accomplished. He helped develop
Speaker 1: the Portion nine eleven and the Lamong winning nine seventeen simultaneously.
Speaker 1: He's the guy behind Audie's Quatro system. He was maybe
Speaker 1: the greatest automotive industrialist that ever lived. Henry Ford be damned,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to go out by building the most
Speaker 1: astonishing car in the world, a car that defied physics,
Speaker 1: not to mention logic and economics. That was his vision
Speaker 1: for the Veyron. Once you experience it, you don't forget it.
Speaker 1: It's like your fondest lover, always lingering in the back
Speaker 1: of your mind, a distant channel emitting a faint hum.
Speaker 1: I wish I could have cured when to drive for
Speaker 1: this episode, to be back on that stretch of one
Speaker 1: on one south of San Luis Obisbo. But these cars
Speaker 1: are impossible to find. They don't exactly have them at
Speaker 1: the Hurtz Gold Counter. They are all squirreled away in collections.
Speaker 1: In the eighteen years since the car came out, I
Speaker 1: have never seen one on the road. To get up
Speaker 1: close and personal, we had to make a pilgrimage to
Speaker 1: the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Here I am
Speaker 1: with my producer Sam in their second floor gallery, so
Speaker 1: cool there. It is the very ron So it is
Speaker 1: hard to get a sense of how small it is
Speaker 1: when it's up on the slinth like this. But it's
Speaker 1: basically just shrink wrapped around the engine and transmission. I
Speaker 1: mean it is just a it's a very small car.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the size of an Audi TT
Speaker 1: or something. The presence is gigantic, but the size is small.
Speaker 1: And here's a back of an envelope drawing by doctor Peck.
Speaker 1: He sketched an eighteen cylinder engine on an envelope while
Speaker 1: riding on a train in Japan. This turned out to
Speaker 1: be a sixteen cylinder engine with four turbos on it,
Speaker 1: but the idea was to go big from the start.
Speaker 1: We went to the Peterson because the museum had recently
Speaker 1: mounted a hypercar's exhibit featuring the Bugatti. So what is
Speaker 1: a hypercar? A hypercar is not merely a sports car,
Speaker 1: some bauble for the wealthiest ten percent. It's not merely
Speaker 1: a supercar for the ostentatious one percent. A hypercar is
Speaker 1: a car that seems to defy possibility, sanity, and decorum.
Speaker 1: A car for the point zero zero zero one percent.
Speaker 1: A hypercar is of that rare class of machine that
Speaker 1: has le avishly hand constructed, ultra rare, sickly capable, and
Speaker 1: grossly expensive, a car worthy of being celebrated in museum galleries.
Speaker 1: Hypercars are atomic wedges, winged pizza slices, MiGs on wheels.
Speaker 1: In pet terms, the supercar is to the golden retriever
Speaker 1: as the hypercar is to the Zebra. You need Zebra
Speaker 1: money to own one. And the car that started at all,
Speaker 1: the very first true hypercar, the car that created the
Speaker 1: category was p X Veyron, the million dollars car. The
Speaker 1: hypercar exhibit at the Peterson had super rare cane eg
Speaker 1: Zaggs and La Ferraris and Hennessy venoms, but the first
Speaker 1: thing that greets you when you enter the gallery is
Speaker 1: the Bugatti, the centerpiece. The Bugatti has long been enshrined,
Speaker 1: and sung I was ahead of Bugatti. Batt I don't
Speaker 1: know what now it is enshrined in the halls of
Speaker 1: automotive history. Excellent curating, gents, this is car show. We'll
Speaker 1: be back with a Veyron after the break back at
Speaker 1: the Peterson. We are in the thrall of this beautifully
Speaker 1: lit brown Bugatti. Many many cows were killed for this interior.
Speaker 1: I mean it is exquisitely done. Everything is leather wrapped
Speaker 1: or real metal or real carbon fiber or titanium. It's
Speaker 1: just exquisite, exquisite materials and everything you touch is heavy.
Speaker 1: It feels great, and this car is super heavy. Do
Speaker 1: you see references to any of other of px kind
Speaker 1: of calling cards in this or is this a true
Speaker 1: original for him? Well, it's funny because Bugatti was an
Speaker 1: Alsatian brand pre war at Tory Bugatti the carmaker. His
Speaker 1: cars were beautifully French, They were live, and they had
Speaker 1: terrific flowing bodywork. Even the race cars had these beautiful
Speaker 1: boat tails and they were really elegant. This is a
Speaker 1: little bit more German like the widest part of the
Speaker 1: car is at the base. It just feels very planted,
Speaker 1: and it's more of a German styling vernacular. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit more like if you imagine the most insane
Speaker 1: Portia nine to eleven of all time, it's kind of this, right,
Speaker 1: got it? So, Eddie, how would you describe the experience
Speaker 1: of driving it? Disorienting? Crazy. It's the fact that it's
Speaker 1: so heavy adds to the sensation of momentum and speed,
Speaker 1: and it's like, how is this thing that is so
Speaker 1: heavy and so kind of a nert feeling going this quickly?
Speaker 1: How is it kind of reversing time? It goes so fast,
Speaker 1: it's like reversing the rotation of the Earth. And it's
Speaker 1: it's weird, Like you see how menacing it looks, just
Speaker 1: sitting still. It's wild. I had this thought like when
Speaker 1: we came around to the front of it, like like
Speaker 1: what if it was like bearing down on you? It
Speaker 1: would be the hell out of the way. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It's sinister. It's almost hard for your mind to wrap
Speaker 1: itself around the extremes of this thing, the extreme luxury
Speaker 1: and the extreme performance. It's totally totally maxed out. Is
Speaker 1: this our guy? Yeah? Hey, how are you Patrick? How's
Speaker 1: it going doing well yourself? Good? Good? This is Patrick Thomas.
Speaker 1: He works for the Peterson Museum. He looks like the
Speaker 1: lost beach Boy, a clean cut Wilson relative. He's the
Speaker 1: Peterson's resident Veyron fiend. So we wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: some questions about the Veyron. Are you a Veyron head
Speaker 1: a little bit? And so kind of why I like
Speaker 1: cars so much? As I first saw this growing up. Really. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It all started back when I was in elementary school
Speaker 1: and they did the scholastic book fairs every elementary school
Speaker 1: kid went to and they had this car on the
Speaker 1: cover of it, and for some reason, like a little
Speaker 1: switch just went off on heads, like I wanted to
Speaker 1: read this whole book. I still have it in my
Speaker 1: childhood room back in my parents house. It's called Fantasy Cars,
Speaker 1: and I just cleaned out that room and I found
Speaker 1: it again, and I just felt like a kid, and
Speaker 1: I was reminded that, oh, hey, we have this at
Speaker 1: my workplace, and this is where it all began. All
Speaker 1: began in the sense of what curiosity I got that
Speaker 1: thing when I was oh four was when I first
Speaker 1: saw that book, I believe. And now we're in twenty two,
Speaker 1: eighteen years later, and I'm still just as in love
Speaker 1: with the cars. And so it was the look of
Speaker 1: the thing. It was the look of the thing. It
Speaker 1: was the numbers, it was the price, it was the exclusivity,
Speaker 1: it was the whole shebang. Everything about it just made
Speaker 1: it so appealing. It's like, my little seven year old brain,
Speaker 1: is this still the pinnacle for you as far as
Speaker 1: hypercars go? Yeah, personally, I think so. They were the
Speaker 1: first to make the whole uber one million plus dollar hypercar,
Speaker 1: and that just stuck with me ever since. So that's
Speaker 1: what qualifies hypercar's hypercar nowadays is if there's only like
Speaker 1: twelve of them made in some tiny little barn out
Speaker 1: in eastern France, and then the engine was made by
Speaker 1: a bunch of magical ferries, And that's what makes a
Speaker 1: hypercar hypercr Before the Veyron, no one dared to charge
Speaker 1: one million for a production car, not even McLaren with
Speaker 1: its limited run F one three seater, but a Prey
Speaker 1: La Bugatti, the Deluge. The Veyron made the world safe
Speaker 1: for million dollars cars, for hypercar and for the lucky
Speaker 1: souls who buy them. So tell me about the engine
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, this is an eight leader W
Speaker 1: sixteen configuration. It's called the sixteen point four because the
Speaker 1: sixteen cylinders that come in the motor with the four
Speaker 1: turbos attached to it. It was one of the first
Speaker 1: of its kind as far as more than just two
Speaker 1: turbos goes sixteen cylinders four turbos, and PC originally wanted
Speaker 1: eighteen cylinders. So tell me about the brakes inside. Of there.
Speaker 1: What's going on? They look like dinner platesgantic. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could probably fit like three turkeys on the side of that.
Speaker 1: The calipers about the size of American football and they're
Speaker 1: meant to they're meant to stop you from two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty six miles an hour in a safe amount
Speaker 1: of time. And the body work, it's all rendered in
Speaker 1: this beautiful carbon fiber, the sort of dark bronze carbon
Speaker 1: fiber with this clear code over it. The bodies are
Speaker 1: carbon fiber, correct, that's correct. The bodies are carbon fiber.
Speaker 1: But since it is part of the hype car class,
Speaker 1: it's all very bespoke. So the original customer of this
Speaker 1: car said, I want a carbon fiber exposed body, and
Speaker 1: I want a clear coat with a little bit of
Speaker 1: gold overtones too. He says, that's real gold. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say it's real gold. I'm just saying the overtones are gold.
Speaker 1: Are there any memorable reactions you've had from people who
Speaker 1: come in and see it? Actually, yeah, there was one
Speaker 1: the other day. I remember there's a kid that just
Speaker 1: turned the corner behind me and just like threw both
Speaker 1: of his hands on his cheeks and just like just
Speaker 1: like his mouth hit the floor and he could really speak.
Speaker 1: His dad was just like laughing, and I knew exactly
Speaker 1: what was going on because I was the same way
Speaker 1: the first time I saw one of these cars at
Speaker 1: that age. Well, Kevin McAlister full Kevin literally the Vincallister,
Speaker 1: like the right here, right in his cheek bones, mouth
Speaker 1: on the floor. Surely the interior is just as over
Speaker 1: the top. No, yeah, the interior is all leather. It's
Speaker 1: very sensitive. You can just take your thumbnail and ruin
Speaker 1: its value, just like if you just nick in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction. So this this is a car bought by
Speaker 1: people who defy gravity. They have they exert no weight
Speaker 1: onto the seat. They are special humanoids who never scuffed
Speaker 1: the leather, who you know can drive this thing with
Speaker 1: one pig key, that's true. Or they just don't to
Speaker 1: pay taxes. I can't tell. It's a glory to behold.
Speaker 1: It really is. Ah. I remember we were received it
Speaker 1: this day. This is only two weeks in this exhibit
Speaker 1: so far. I was there when we received an I
Speaker 1: was just felt like I was that kid again. I
Speaker 1: was like, ah, there you are, I missed you. Meet
Speaker 1: your heroes, right, meet your heroes. And then often sometimes
Speaker 1: they disappoint, but this one definitely did not. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you that the Vey Run was built to be the
Speaker 1: fastest production car in the universe and also the most expensive,
Speaker 1: But it was also a highly personal project. As with
Speaker 1: Patrick our museum guide, Doctor pas obsession was tied to
Speaker 1: a book. He wanted the car to produce a thousand
Speaker 1: and one horsepower because his favorite story as a child
Speaker 1: was A thousand and one Arabian Nights. He wanted it
Speaker 1: to go two hundred and fifty three miles per hour
Speaker 1: because his Porsche nine seventeen and Durance Racer topped out
Speaker 1: at two fifty two on the Mosan Strait at Lament
Speaker 1: In Pax a half like pursuit, the Bugatti became less
Speaker 1: a car than a physics problem, a solution to a
Speaker 1: cascading series of impossibilities. It's the old if you give
Speaker 1: a mouse a cookie scenario. How can we make a
Speaker 1: thousand and one horsepower hypercar that anyone's grandmother can drive
Speaker 1: and make sure it starts every time at minus thirty
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. To make all that power, it will need
Speaker 1: sixteen cylinders and four turbos. With all that plumbing, it
Speaker 1: will need twelve radiators to keep its engine from imploding.
Speaker 1: To get that power to the ground, it will need
Speaker 1: all wheel drive. The added weight of the all wheel
Speaker 1: drive system will require stronger suspension and tires, and at
Speaker 1: top speed, even the strongest tires will rip themselves apart
Speaker 1: before the car runs out of fuel. So the custom
Speaker 1: Michelin tires are unit with the wheel and cost seventy
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a set to replace. Final total price tag
Speaker 1: a whopping one million euro a copy, and Bugatti still
Speaker 1: lost money on each one funny story about the tires.
Speaker 1: When Pech told Michelin that he needed a road tire
Speaker 1: that could survive the car's two hundred and fifty three
Speaker 1: mile an hour top speed, they told him he was nuts.
Speaker 1: They said that customers who wanted to experience the car's
Speaker 1: phenomenal top speed capability would have to take the regular
Speaker 1: tires off the car and installed dedicated racing tires to
Speaker 1: make the run. Then, proving that Michelin was indeed correct
Speaker 1: about PC being nuts, he allegedly threatened to cancel all
Speaker 1: of Michelin's tire contracts for all of the VW Group's cars.
Speaker 1: We're talking millions of units per year times four. If
Speaker 1: they couldn't deliver a street tire that could go all
Speaker 1: the way from zero mph to two fifty three without delaminating,
Speaker 1: guess what happened. So, yes, the Vay Run only exists
Speaker 1: because the guy in charge was steaming furiously toward this
Speaker 1: thing in his head and willing to lay it all
Speaker 1: on the line to make it happen. And it only
Speaker 1: exists because he was willing to lose wads of money.
Speaker 1: Even though the car costs seven figures, Bugatti only planned
Speaker 1: to make three hundred of them over the entire run.
Speaker 1: That would hardly cover the cost of the dedicated headquarters
Speaker 1: and factory he built to make the car in Moulzheim, France,
Speaker 1: at the ancestral home of the original Bugatti family. As
Speaker 1: our friend Patrick at the Peterson made clear, the price
Speaker 1: tag was significant because it crossed a psychological chasm unprecedented
Speaker 1: at the time one million dollars. But and this is
Speaker 1: going to be rare for the show, I'd like to
Speaker 1: focus here on the performance rather than the psychological chasms.
Speaker 1: Without the performance, there'd be no way to justify the
Speaker 1: helicopter adjacent pricing. But the most important thing about the
Speaker 1: Veyron's performance is that it crossed a threshold that was
Speaker 1: as significant as it was invisible. It was faster than
Speaker 1: gravity free fall acceleration equates to zero to sixty miles
Speaker 1: per hour in two point seven seconds. That's the force
Speaker 1: of gravity. The quantifiable accelerative speed of one. Previously zero
Speaker 1: to sixty and two point seven seconds, or the rate
Speaker 1: of free fall, was thought to be the physical limit
Speaker 1: of car acceleration on the road, but the veyron slipped
Speaker 1: past that rate. It hit sixty miles per hour in
Speaker 1: two point five seconds. So this thing, in a manner
Speaker 1: of speaking, this thing out accelerated gravity. Well, firstly, that
Speaker 1: is not a meaningful sentence. Yes, and no. Gravity will
Speaker 1: propagate through space the speed of light, so it travels
Speaker 1: at a thick speed. But maybe a way of saying it,
Speaker 1: doctor Carl, is that it'll go faster on the pavement
Speaker 1: than if you drop it off a building. Oh god, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is absolutely astonishing. It's crazy. That's Australian physicist doctor
Speaker 1: Carl Kushelnitzky. We spoke with him about what the veyron
Speaker 1: was able to achieve speedwise and how it was able
Speaker 1: to do it. Doctor Carl, why do you think no
Speaker 1: other car achieved what the veyron was able to achieve
Speaker 1: one g of straight line acceleration. They were getting close,
Speaker 1: but you needed immense, ridiculous horsepower. You know, if you
Speaker 1: get five horsepower, go for a thousand, right, mind you,
Speaker 1: A lot of that was needed because of the immense weight.
Speaker 1: Nearly two times so they the front of the tire
Speaker 1: kissed the road at no stage with the tires slippy.
Speaker 1: So it was just because it had that maximum amount
Speaker 1: of horsepower. And of course good electronics you can deliver
Speaker 1: all of that horsepower to the ground. Though explainable now,
Speaker 1: it just seemed impossible at the time, even to people
Speaker 1: who get paid to know about this stuff. I once
Speaker 1: commissioned world famous science guy Neil de grass Tyson to
Speaker 1: rate an essay for us at current driver on the
Speaker 1: nature of speed. In our discussions about the piece, he
Speaker 1: claimed no vehicle could accelerate faster than the speed of
Speaker 1: freefall see or to sixty and two point seven seconds.
Speaker 1: Then I showed him the acceleration curve of the veyron.
Speaker 1: Oh right, he said, I wasn't factoring in the grip
Speaker 1: from the tires. This was the equivalent of breaking the
Speaker 1: sound barrier in flight or the four minute mile, and
Speaker 1: like those other once impossible feats, after it happened the
Speaker 1: first time, it suddenly seemed achievable and easy. Many other
Speaker 1: cars followed in the Veyron's gravity beating wake, but it
Speaker 1: was the Bugatti that set the template for sub two
Speaker 1: point seven seconds sprints. It did it by combining its
Speaker 1: tarmac ripping, all wheel drive, traction, quad turbocharged sixteen cylinder engine,
Speaker 1: and launch control system. These three elements together are what
Speaker 1: spear the Bugatti toward the horizon with sickening speed. And
Speaker 1: when you do accelerate full out in the Veyron, you
Speaker 1: realize that you are testing the limits of the human machine.
Speaker 1: We Homo sapiens, were not engineered to accelerate this quickly.
Speaker 1: Our brains and inner ears are keyed to the force
Speaker 1: of gravity. Falling out of a tree may have scrambled
Speaker 1: your brain when you hit the ground, but not on
Speaker 1: the way down. But going from zero to sixty in
Speaker 1: less than two point seven seconds, that's a roller coaster
Speaker 1: ride parked in your driveway. You've got a train for it.
Speaker 1: It rattles your organs and robs your brain of blood.
Speaker 1: It literally takes your breath away p X. Veyron pushed
Speaker 1: the envelope, not just the mechanical one, the human one.
Speaker 1: In the writing about cars business, one of our horrious
Speaker 1: cliches is that a really fast car seems to defy physics.
Speaker 1: I even used it earlier in this episode time Worn.
Speaker 1: Though the phrase may be, it makes no sense when
Speaker 1: you think about it. By its very nature, physics can't
Speaker 1: be defied. It's our understanding of physics that's incomplete. If
Speaker 1: something seems to defy physics, well then our conception of
Speaker 1: the science itself needs to change. That's what the Veyron
Speaker 1: did for the automotive universe. It expanded our understanding of
Speaker 1: the possible. You can thank the little Austrian guy with
Speaker 1: the bad attitude for that. Car Show is written and
Speaker 1: hosted by me Eddie Alterman. It's produced by Sam Dingman,
Speaker 1: Jacob Smith and Amy Gaines. Our editor is Jen Guera.
Speaker 1: Original music and mastering by Benaladay. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Mia Loebell. Our show art was designed by Sean Karney
Speaker 1: and airbrushed by Greg la Fever. Our patron saints are
Speaker 1: Leetal Malad and Justine Lange. Car Show is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show in others
Speaker 1: from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus
Speaker 1: is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted
Speaker 1: listening for just four ninety nine a month. Look for
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions To find more Pushkin podcasts.
Speaker 1: Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts.