Bugatti Veyron: A Guide To Every Version

The year 2005 saw the arrival of many new pieces of technology that would go on to shape culture and travel for years to come. The Xbox 360 was launched, for instance, and the gigantic Airbus A380 made its maiden flight. Nothing from 2005, however, has made as big an impact in our lives as car people as the Bugatti Veyron.

That’s right: in 2025, the era-defining hypercar celebrates two decades of life. While faster cars have come and gone since, none of them quite seem to have arrived with the same awe-inspiring impact as the Veyron did 20 years ago.

It feels like a fine time, then, to take a look back at the life and times of the Veyron and why it’s still held in such high regard two decades on from its birth.

Origins

In the early part of the 20th century, Bugatti – founded in France by Italian designer Ettore Bugatti – made some of the most successful racing cars and desirable road cars in the world. After the Second World War, though, the company was wound up and spent the best part of 35 years dormant.

In 1987, Italian businessman Romano Artioli bought the rights to the name and set about reviving it, originally resulting in the arrival of the EB110 supercar in 1991. This iteration of the company, however, was out of business by 1995.

It was in late 1998 that the Bugatti name was acquired by a serious automotive powerhouse: Volkswagen. In this period, the German company, chaired by the enigmatic Ferdinand Piëch, was flush with cash and even more so with ambition, and with the Bugatti name in its pocket, it set about positioning the brand as its crowning glory.

A series of concept cars quickly arrived throughout 1998 and 1999 – a two-door front-engined grand tourer named the EB 118, a four-door luxury saloon called the EB 218, and a mid-engined supercar christened the 18/3 Chiron. Each of these cars featured a 6.3-litre W18 engine, essentially three of VW’s VR6s merged into one gigantic powerplant.

Later in 1999, the Chiron concept was refined into the EB 18/4 Veyron, and it was this concept that Piëch announced in 2000 would hit production, targeting a truly unprecedented set of figures: 1000 horsepower, a 249mph top speed, and 0-62mph in under three seconds. And all this was to be in a car as luxurious and civilised as an Audi A8.

The first hurdle came with the W18 engine: despite its 18 cylinders, VW simply couldn’t find a way of making it generate that lofty power target. The design was swapped for a W16, which, with its narrower cylinder banks and smaller overall size, left room for four turbochargers. Combined with the displacement being upped to a huge 8.0 litres, it was on course to hit that mythical 1000hp, or 986bhp, number.

As the new millennium rolled on, development began in earnest, as VW’s brightest minds grappled with how to make a car simultaneously capable of setting new performance benchmarks and cruising around town like a Golf. By 2005, they completed their task: the Veyron had arrived.

Veyron 16.4

The original Veyron – named after 1930s Bugatti racing driver Pierre Veyron – arrived on the scene in 2005 and totally tore up the rulebook. The 16.4 suffix on its name referred to the car’s 16 cylinders and four turbochargers, which helped it achieve 1001ps (987bhp).

That was Piëch’s first target achieved, and it helped deliver those staggering performance numbers, too: top speed was actually 254mph (knocking the McLaren F1 off the perch it had occupied since 1998), and 0-62mph took 2.5 seconds.

To help keep all this power in check, the Veyron featured a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox, all-wheel drive, and massive carbon ceramic brakes aided by a rear wing that flipped upwards to act as an airbrake under heavy braking.

The tyres were specially developed by Michelin to withstand nearly 1900kg of car travelling at over 250mph, and these days, a figure of $42,000 (around £32,500) is thrown around as the typical price of a set. That was only a small part of the expense of a car that cost around £925,000 when new (around £1.6 million in 2025 money), but despite that, Bugatti reportedly lost millions on every car sold.

In production between 2005 and 2011, this original setup spawned a number of special editions. 2007’s Pur Sang, limited to five units, saw paint eschewed for raw carbon fibre and aluminium.

In 2008, Bugatti unveiled the Sang Noir, a limited edition inspired by the Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic, complete with deep black paintwork and a vibrant bright tan interior. 12 Sang Noirs were made.

Also in 2008 came the Veyron Fbg Par Hermès, a tie-in with ultra-high end Parisian fashion brand Hermès. The colour of the bonnet section of the Veyron’s signature two-tone paint was continued in an interior full of details designed by Hermès’ workshops.

The 2009 Bleu Centenaire was a one-off celebrating the 100th anniversary of Bugatti’s establishment, and as such came in an all-blue colour scheme in a nod to the company’s past representing France on the global motor racing stage.

These centenary celebrations continued at the 2009 Villa d’Este concours on the shores of Lake Como, when a quartet of special Veyron 16.4s were unveiled. Each was named after a driver that raced for Bugatti in its original glory days, and featured unpainted aluminium outer bodywork paired with a centre part in the national racing colours of each driver: the “Jean-Pierre Wimile” in French blue, the “Achille Varzi” in Italian red, the “Malcolm Campbell” in British green and the “Hermann zu Leiningen” in German white.

Including these special editions, 252 Veyron 16.4 coupes were made, making it easily the most numerous version.

Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport

In 2009, the Veyron lost its roof. The Grand Sport was a targa-topped convertible version, supplied with two different interchangeable roof panels: a solid glass piece and a stowable fabric item that opened up like an umbrella, designed to quickly cover the cabin if the weather suddenly turned.

The chassis featured extra strengthening to compensate for the inherently less rigid roadster body, and with the glass roof in place, the 16.4 Grand Sport could hit an identical 254mph top speed to its fixed-roof sibling. Top speed with the roof off was limited to 229mph, and if the driver had to resort to the umbrella-like temporary fabric arrangement, the fastest this 987bhp, 16-cylinder mega-car could go without tearing the roof apart was a mere 81mph.

Grand Sport production began in 2009, and it too spawned a few special editions. First came the one-off Sang Bleu, another part of those 2009 centenary celebrations. Its bodywork was a combination of polished aluminium and royal blue-tinted carbon fibre.

2011 brought perhaps the most outlandish special edition Veyron of all: the L’or Blanc. A collaboration with Berlin’s Royal Porcelain Factory, the delicate ceramic was featured throughout the interior, as well as on the wheel centre caps and fuel and oil filler caps. Finally, it was hand-painted in a blue-and-white livery representing light flowing over and reflecting off the car. Unsurprisingly, only one was produced.

Another equally striking one-off arrived in 2012: the Bernar Venet. Named after the French conceptual artist that helped design it, the bodywork was painted in a livery featuring equations and formulae used to calculate the massive power of the W16 engine. In fact, it’s about the only car that’s managed to make maths cool.

Including these one-offs, 58 Veyron 16.4 Grand Sports were made.

Veyron 16.4 Super Sport

At no point in the early part of the Veyron’s life did anyone who experienced one suggest it could do with being a bit faster. That didn’t stop Bugatti from having a go, though. Perhaps spurred on by the fact that the Veyron had lost its record as the fastest production car to the 256mph SSC Ultimate Aero in 2007, it debuted a new version in 2010: the 16.4 Super Sport.

Thanks to bigger turbos and intercoolers and a freer-breathing exhaust, power was lifted to a massive 1184bhp. The gearing was tweaked with top speed in mind, too, and though superficially similar, the bodywork was thoroughly reworked for less drag. All the panels were now carbon fibre, rather than the standard car’s combination of carbon and aluminium.

Although 0-62mph remained a still lighting-quick 2.5 seconds, the Super Sport accelerated harder than the standard car. It would hit 125mph in 6.7 seconds rather than 7.3, and cut the 0-186mph time from 16.7 to 14.6 seconds.

In 2010, at VW’s huge Ehra-Lessien test track, Bugatti test driver Pierre Henri Raphanel took the Super Sport to a two-way average of 268mph. This, however, was achieved with the car’s electronic speed limiter deactivated. When in the hands of customers, the Super Sport would hit ‘only’ 258mph. Despite that, the record would eventually be given the all-clear, and the Veyron was back at the top of the production car pile in terms of raw speed.

48 Super Sport coupes were made, making it the scarcest Veyron variant. Five of these were World Record Editions, finished in an identical spec to the record-breaking car – bare carbon fibre with orange accents.

Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse

Come 2012, the only logical thing left for Bugatti to do was combine the 1184bhp engine of the Super Sport with the roadster body of the Grand Sport. It did just that with the Grand Sport Vitesse.

Although based on the standard Veyron’s chassis rather than the Super Sport’s strengthened tub, pretty much everything else, including the full carbon bodywork, came from the Super Sport. It quickly established itself as the fastest convertible around, hitting 254mph in 2013.

In 2013, the GSV got its own World Record Edition, sporting similar unpainted carbon, orange-accented bodywork to the equivalent coupe. Eight of these were produced.

Later in 2013, Bugatti announced a run of six ‘Les Légendes de Bugatti’ editions. Introduced throughout 2013 and 2014, each was a tribute to a person (or, in one case, a car) that had been instrumental in Bugatti’s early successes, culminating in an Ettore Bugatti edition in 2014. Just three of each Legendes des Bugatti edition were built.

The GSV spawned a few customer-specific one-offs too, including the white and blue Le Ciel Californian and the unimaginatively-named, black and yellow 1 Of 1.

Quite literally the ultimate Veyron, though, arrived at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show in the form of the Grand Sport Vitesse La Finale. Finished in a flipped version of the red and black scheme that the original Veyron 16.4 coupe had debuted in a decade earlier, it was not only the 92nd Grand Sport Vitesse made but the 450th and final Veyron. The car’s journey was at an end.

What came next?

How do you follow up a car as genuinely era-defining, as game-changing, as the Veyron? By doing it again, apparently. In 2016, the Veyron’s successor, the Chiron, appeared. It featured another development of the 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16, now with a faintly ludicrous 1479bhp, good for 62mph in 2.4 seconds and 261mph.

It spawned a host of special editions of its own, not least a Super Sport which, in derestricted form, became the first road car to break the 300mph barrier which, six years later, still feels like a strange sentence to type.

The Chiron reached the end of the road in 2024 and was replaced by the Tourbillon. Despite a general industry trend towards downsizing, the new car has managed to keep a 16-cylinder engine. Not only that, but it’s totally different to what came before: a naturally aspirated, 8.3-litre V16 built by Cosworth in the UK. Rather than turbocharging, the added grunt to reach the peak power figure of 1775bhp comes by way of three electric motors.

While it’s still early days for the Tourbillon, we expect it’ll live a similarly long, spectacular and record-breaking life to its predecessors. Neither the Chiron nor the Tourbillon, though, could have happened without the Veyron proving that a car like this was possible. In the 20 years since it launched, the only cars that have been able to imitate its recipe of huge performance and massive luxury are its own successors.