If you follow our Facebook page you will have noticed that today we celebrated the Bugatti Veyron by posting as many pictures as we could. We asked our fans to post pictures to our wall with their favorite shots and now, we want to share a selection of these photos with our frontpage following too!

The Bugatti Veyron has been a divisive hypercar judging by some of the reactions we’ve had to the pictures today. Many like the fact that it is a technological tour de force, however, there’s more than a handful of you that find the styling dull and the whole idea pointless. It’s difficult not to be impressed by the amount of engineering involved in the project and the quality of the package though.

To start from the beginning, the Veyron name comes from historic Bugatti racing driver Pierre Veyron, who won the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1939. Essentially, the Bugatti Veyron is a car built around an engine.

The first concept appeared in 1999 at the Tokyo Motor Show when Bugatti unveiled the EB 18/4 ‘Veyron’ concept car. Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piëch then confirmed production at the 2000 Geneva Motor Show. Instead of the previously announced W18, Piëch announced a W16 would be used instead; an engine that debuted in the 1999 Bentley Hunaudieres concept.

The production car appeared at the 2006 Pebble Beach Concours after a long period of design and testing. An official European launch followed on September 3rd 2006 and deliveries started soon after.

The car itself did indeed feature the promised eight litre W16 engine. It’s essentially two V8 engines merged together at a single crankshaft. We’ve all heard the figures, four turbochargers, ten radiators, sixty four valves and a total power figure of 1,001hp.

The Veyron features a seven speed, dual-clutch, direct-shift gearbox built by Ricardo in England rather than Volkswagen’s favoured DSG builder, Borg-Warner. It also has a four wheel drive system that allows all the power to be used effectively.

As well as 1,001hp, the Veyron also has 1,250Nm of torque. Both figures are electronically limited to protect the tyres. A pre-production Veyron hit 408.47km/h (253.81mph) on a measured run at the Ehra-Lessien test track in 2005. This made it the fastest car available at the time, beating the previous record held by Koenigsegg.

Top Speed is not available all the time though. Under normal settings, the Veyron is only capable of 350km/h (220mph). To achieve this, at 220km/h (140mph) the car lowers itself until it has a ground clearance of around 9cm and the wing and spoiler rise. A special key to the left of the driver’s seat allows top speed to be reached; the rear spoiler retracts, the front air diffusers shut and ground clearance decreases to 6.5cm.

Of course, all this comes at a price. €1,225,000 if you live in Europe, £1,065,000 if you live in the UK or $1,700,000 if you live in the US.

Bugatti also produced a number of special editions. In fact, the factory could even produce you a special edition of your own. In order of when they became available, we had the aluminium and carbon fibre Pur Sang, the Fbg Par Hermès, the black carbon fibre Sang Noir limited to 15 models, the Bugatti Blue matte and gloss Bleu Centenaire and the four L’Edition Centenaire.

Then we got the Grand Sport, the convertible version of the Veyron. Same stats as above but with even more special editions including the aluminium and blue carbon fibre Sang Bleu, the Grey Carbon edition and the L’Or Blanc. Each of these featured just one special edition.

The Bugatti Veyron Super Sport appeared in 2010 with 1,183hp. Of course, Bugatti tested it and broke records again, this time setting a 431.072 km/h (267.856 mph) top speed. Production cars were limited to 415 km/h (258 mph) to protect the tyres from disintegrating. Only 30 were produced compare to the standard Veyron’s 300 unit production run.

The final part of the Bugatti Veyron story is the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse. It features the same engine as the Super Sport but with the body of a Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport. Top speed is 410km/h (255mph) which makes it the fastest convertible in the world!

To bring an end to Bugatti day, we’d like to thank everyone for sending us their photos!

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