New car news

27 February 2012 - 11:00

New Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse

Please be upstanding for the most powerful factory-built roadster in the history of TIME - the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse.

So, what sort of numbers does a convertible need to be the fastest in the world? 883kW and 1500Nm. That's 147kW and 248Nm up from the cooking variety Veyron's 736kW and 1252Nm. Or roughly one Golf GTI more...

Extra power's been teased out of the 16-cylinder engine by enlarging the four - FOUR - turbochargers and intercoolers. The chassis's also been beefed up to support the extra muscle.

Bugatti President Wolfgang Dürheimer says: "The rapid success of the Super Sport convinced us to increase the performance of the Bugatti roadster... Our engineers worked hard to demonstrate that Bugatti is able to constantly redefine the boundaries of what is technically feasible."

No performance stats have been released yet, but if it's anything like the Veyron Super Sport, it'll hover around 2.5 seconds to 100km/h. That's 0.2 seconds faster than the current Grand Sport. Pricing's equally mysterious, but we reckon it'll be in the region of $3m. Yes, three million dollars. But don't expect to be able to buy one in Australia.

We'll have more details when after it's been revealed at the 2012 Geneva motor show next month.

In the meantime, click through our gallery of all the Veyron models Bugatti has ever made.