Capitalismo vs Trabantismo

Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport

The first Veyron is an engineering marvel. That's the one with the massively reinforced roof .... It stands as one of the greatest achievements of the petroleum age. It required the intellectual might of one of the largest and arguably smartest car companies in the world to birth a car that was not only faster than anything on the road, but easy enough to pilot that anyone could drive it.

To make the Grand Sport, Bugatti's engineers had to do the same thing, only with a giant hole in the middle .... The result is the most structurally rigid convertible in the world, which, miraculously, weighs no more and goes no slower than the coupe on which it is based.

In the Grand Sport it [60 mph] takes a hair under 2.5 [seconds]. How does it feel to command that pace? Godlike.

We're at the end of the petroleum era, the end of a golden age of supercars where speed can be sought regardless of consequence. It's highly unlikely that a major automaker will ever be able to justify spending the time and money to develop a fossil-fuel-powered car that can top the Veyron's combination of power, speed, handling, driveability and flat-out luxury ... the last king of the gas-guzzlers, forever the greatest. All hail.