[Steve Cassani]

About four years ago Gordon Murray wrote an analysis of the Veyrons design for Automobile magazine. He concluded that the decision to style the vehicle before entrusting it to the engineers-"Here. Make this go over 250 miles per hour."-made extracting the required performance more difficult than would be the case, approaching the challenge from the other way round. Unlike building a competitive version of the McLaren F1, the cost to achieve an incremental increase in maximum speed of the Veyron is more reflective of the inherent weakness in the way the project was managed than it is an indicator of the added resistance to be overcome, pushing an object travelling at 256 mph eleven miles per hour faster.