Bugatti Veyron Super Sport hits 268mph

Remember when 200mph seemed an almost impassable barrier, reserved only for the fastest hypercars? Those days may be long gone, but even in the era of 200mph estate cars there’s something pretty special about Bugatti’s latest achievement.

Yesterday, at the Volkswagen Group’s Ehra-Lessien development facility a Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport piloted by factory driver Pierre Henri Raphanel set an average speed of 431kph over two runs. That’s 268mph. In a road car.

More to the point, it was also a standard production road car – provided, that is, you can ever classify a 16-cylinder, 1200bhp, €1,950,000 Veyron as standard. Upgrades relative to the modest 1,001bhp base model include enlarged turbos and intercoolers, greater spring travel, revised dampers and a re-programmed 4-wheel drive system. All of which throws down the gauntlet to the likes of the Hennessey Venom GT (a 1,200bhp Anglo-American supercar said to be capable of ‘at least 262mph’). How long until the first 300mph production car? Place your bets now.