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10 Years Later, Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse Remains The World’s Fastest Open-top Car
10 years later, the 1,200 PS Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse remains the world’s fastest Roadster.
Bugatti unveiled the Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse, the open-top version of the Veyron 16.4 Super Sport, in 2012.
Soon after, the roadster hit 254.04 mph to break the speed record for open-top vehicles – and it still holds it to this day.
It’s been ten years since the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse hit a top speed of 408.84 km/h (254.04 mph) to establish itself as the world’s most powerful and fastest production roadster.
This record for open-top vehicles, set shortly after its debut at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show, still stands today. The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse is simply an open-top version of the Veyron 16.4 Super Sport Coupe unveiled at the 2008 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.
According to Bugatti, the greatest challenge when it came to the new roadster was ensuring sufficient driving stability, rollover protection and the removable roof of the predecessor Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport.
To achieve this, Bugatti engineers created a removable roof module made from lightweight polycarbonate, which made open-top driving possible in just a few manual steps.
“Minus the roof, the Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse demonstrates just how unparalleled Bugatti’s engineering expertise is. Although the weight distribution is completely different when the roof is down, the vehicle remains stable and accelerates just as impressively as it does with the roof closed,” said Christophe Piochon, the president of Bugatti.
“With the Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse, Bugatti proved it was possible to build an open-top hyper sports car with very high performance and power output that drives extremely dynamically and very comfortably.”
Powered by Bugatti’s massive W16 engine, which allows the 1,183 horsepower (1,200 PS) mid-engine roadster to accelerate from a stand still to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 2.6 seconds. On normal roads, the Vitesse is electronically limited to 375 km/h (233 mph) when the roof is down, which is 10 mph (15 km/h) faster than the Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport that preceded it.
