http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,26789-2056987,00.html

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           World title fight
           Is the new pretender to Best Car on the Planet really better
than the old champion? Nicholas Rufford and Andrew Frankel of The Sunday
Times duelled it out
           View exclusive video footage of the Bugatti and McLaren F1

           BUGATTI VEYRON

           It was to be the face-off the world has been waiting for; the
duel between the two greatest road cars, the like of which will almost
certainly never be seen again in an oil-hungry, emissions-regulated,
eco-friendly world.

           Not since Ben Johnson took on Carl Lewis in the 1987 Rome world
championships, or Muhammad Ali rumbled George Foreman in the sweltering heat
of the Zairean jungle in 1974, would two such evenly matched heavyweights
contest the right to be the greatest. And where better for the Bugatti
Veyron to meet the McLaren F1 than the Nürburgring in Germany, scene of some
of the most awe-inspiring races in history.

           That, at least, was the plan. Things started well: Bugatti would
make the Veyron available. But the F1 proved more difficult. McLaren at
first said it would be delighted to help. Then it had second thoughts and a
PR lady called Ellen wanted to know what the F1 was going to be tested
against. When she heard it was a Veyron an iron curtain suddenly descended.

           "I have checked with our customer care department and I'm afraid
that we are unable to help on this occasion," said a final frosty e-mail.
This is the effect the Veyron has on people. It is feared like a mythical
creature.

           The contest would have to take place in absentia. We would test
the Veyron near the Bugatti factory in Molsheim, France, then fly back to
Britain and drive a privately owned F1 on an airfield in Wiltshire.

           McLaren's concern was understandable (though it would have been
braver to accept the challenge). The statistics for the Veyron are fearsome.
Its 1001bhp engine delivers 922 lb ft of torque - three times as much as a
Land Rover Discovery and yet it weighs a third less. At top speed it covers
the length of a football field every second; truly it is a monster.

           It has been claimed that the Veyron, named after a 1930s racing
driver, is so quick that it could allow the F1 to start first and reach
120mph and would still reach 200mph first. In fact this claim is unfair to
the McLaren - but not by much. You can let the McLaren reach 65mph and the
Veyron will still beat it to 190mph before leaving it for dust.

           That is not the only advantage the Veyron has in a straight
fight with the McLaren. In every way - performance, build quality, ingenuity
of design - it is the better car. It will fool you with just how well
behaved it is, cruising quietly on B roads or nosing through the traffic.
But it is cuddly in the same way as a polar bear. Put your foot down and it
sprouts teeth and claws. It's like being in a Ferrari F430 going through an
Incredible Hulk metamorphosis. Being pushed back in your seat on the way to
60mph is one thing, but experiencing the same acceleration passing 160mph is
a new sensation. The landscape becomes speed-blurred like a cartoon. Other
cars appear to be going backwards. You expect to look in your mirror and see
you've blown their doors off and sucked out their radiator grilles.

           Flipping between gears with the steering wheel paddles takes
just 0.015sec. The power delivery is seamless, the engine note rising from a
deep burble like a powerboat tethered to a jetty to a howl like a Formula
One car.

                              Flipping between gears with the steering
wheel paddles takes just 0.015sec. The power delivery is seamless, the
engine note rising from a deep burble like a powerboat tethered to a jetty
to a howl like a Formula One car

           It's hardly surprising the Veyron is the stuff of myth. Europe's
richest car company poured tens of millions of pounds into developing it in
a fit of extravagance. Exactly how much, Volkswagen won't say, but it was a
lot more than poor old Gordon Murray had to spend when he was knocking up a
prototype F1 back in 1992.

           In 1998, the year that McLaren stopped production of the F1, VW
bought the Bugatti marque. Quietly, it started going around Europe like Yul
Brynner in The Magnificent Seven, recruiting the best component suppliers.
What it was asking for was as far-fetched as using only seven men to defend
a Mexican town from a small army: a transmission that didn't disintegrate;
tyres that didn't explode; brakes that didn't melt. Furthermore, every part
of the Veyron had to be tested to engineering tolerances closer to those
applied by Nasa than in car manufacture. Not too ambitious, then.

           Remarkably, Bugatti got almost all it wanted. The seven-speed
double-clutch gearbox is produced by Ricardo in Leamington Spa. The
carbon-fibre monocoque chassis is from ATR, which also makes the chassis for
the Porsche Carrera GT and the Ferrari Enzo. The body shell is spray-painted
by Weiss, which has the contract for Maybach. The leather interior is
stitched by Boxman, supplier to Bentley; the seats are by Sparco, which also
supplies Ferrari and the World Rally Championship, and the brakes are made
by AP Racing of Coventry, one of the most renowned suppliers of racing
brakes.

           The alloy fascia with analogue instruments has the feel of
old-fashioned, burnished quality. You can choose your colour or combination
of colours for the interior for the basic price of £810,345 (if you want
safety belts to match it's an extra £24,000). Compare that with the F1,
which is more like an overgrown go-kart with no comforts, just a big
carbon-fibre baby seat for the driver, a three-point harness and a smell of
petrol.

           Thomas Bscher, the suave former banker who is now Bugatti's
president, used to own an F1. He drove it to work every day for two years
from his home in Cologne to his office in Frankfurt before selling it in
2003 to an American collector Miles Collier. He doesn't like comparing the
two cars but says the Veyron is better in every respect bar one: the McLaren
was lighter (". . . although it didn't feel it. It felt much heavier than it
was").

           Bscher won't reveal who his customers are but confirms 60
Veyrons have been ordered by discreetly wealthy buyers - "old money" car
enthusiasts as opposed to internet entrepreneurs or gangsta rappers. One of
the first cars, an all-black model, has been bought by Ralph Lauren, a man
who already owns an F1 and, according to some accounts, two of them.

           You can understand why every billionaire wants a Veyron; only
300 will be made and there will probably never be anything like it again.
When it was conceived by Ferdinand Piëch, former boss of VW, it was
nicknamed Piëch's folly. The rumour goes that as a youngster Piëch was never
satisfied with his hand in Top Trumps and wanted a car that could beat all
rivals.

           The Veyron is that car. VW's chances of recouping Piëch's huge
investment are the same as seeing Jeremy Clarkson in a tutu. Already the
car's
days are numbered. Within five years Bugatti will have tamed the mighty
engine and gearbox and put them in a more practical and slower four-seater
car. The Veyron will remain unsurpassed.

           We eventually borrowed an F1 from Nick Mason, the drummer from
Pink Floyd and author of Into the Red, a book about the world's best cars.
Mason is rich enough not to care whether his McLaren F1 isn't the fastest
road car any more. Indeed, he's so rich he wants a Veyron.

           Nicholas Rufford

           VITAL STATISTICS

           Model  Bugatti Veyron
           Engine 7993cc, 16 cylinders
           Power  1001bhp @ 6000rpm
           Torque 922 lb ft @ 2200rpm
           Transmission Seven-speed DSG, manual and auto
           Performance 0-62mph: 2.5sec
           Top speed: 253mph
           Price £810,345
           Verdict Masterpiece that gives everything a good spanking
           Rating Five stars

           Page two: Andrew Frankel on the McLaren F1

           McLAREN F1

           The first two days of May 1994 are unlikely to slip my mind. On
May 1 Ayrton Senna, the only hero I've ever had, was killed, and on May 2 I
became the first journalist to test the McLaren F1, a car created by Gordon
Murray, who had also designed Senna's Formula One cars.

           I drove the F1 to 211mph on an airfield runway and then
predicted that the twin pressures of budgetary constraint and political
correctness meant that there would never be a faster road car than this.

           Well, I got that wrong. It's taken more than a decade but as
Nick Rufford will doubtless delight in telling you, the Bugatti Veyron is
indeed faster than a McLaren F1. It will do 253mph, while the fastest a
McLaren has gone is a mere 240.1mph.

           But this is meaningless to all bar the statistically obsessed.
Achieving the maximum possible speed was so far off Murray's and McLaren's
agenda when he made the F1 that it was four years before they bothered to
find out. The brief, in Murray's own words, was to produce "the best sports
car in the world". Not the fastest, just the best.

           What he wanted was much more subtle. He wanted a car small
enough to thread through city streets, yet big enough to take three people
and their luggage. He wanted it to have a 6.1 litre V12 engine - the most
powerful then seen in a road car - yet weigh less than a small family
shopping car. All he had on his side was vision, determination and technical
brilliance.

           The car he designed was made from carbon fibre and was so strong
it could drive away from its front-impact crash test because the damage was
so light. To save weight and keep the driving experience pure there are no
airbags, ABS or power steering. You sat in the middle of the car just as you
would in an F1 car, with your passengers to the side and slightly behind.

           The V12 produced 627bhp, which may seem a far cry from the
Veyron's 1001bhp, but when you factor in weight a different picture emerges.
The Bugatti provides 513bhp for every ton of car, the McLaren a touch more
than 550bhp per ton. The Bugatti accelerates faster because it has
four-wheel-drive traction.

           The F1 was so fast that when customers told McLaren they wanted
to race theirs at Le Mans, Murray created a stripped-out racing version that
promptly went out and destroyed all-comers at its first attempt.

                              The F1 was so fast that when customers told
McLaren they wanted to race theirs at Le Mans, Murray created a stripped-out
racing version that promptly went out and destroyed all-comers at its first
attempt

           The car you're looking at is more powerful than the standard
road car. It is a racing F1 modified for road use by its owner Nick Mason,
the drummer with Pink Floyd. More than 220lb lighter than the road F1, and
with those tiresome engine race restrictors removed, it has 53bhp more than
the road car. In short this is a car like no other you'll find wearing a tax
disc.

           I've never known another road car that, even on a dry, straight
runway, requires courage just to press your foot to the floor. Wheelspin
renders first and second gear useless, and even in third you can light up
the gargantuan rear tyres at speeds under 100mph. The forces on your body
are so strong you struggle to accept that it is a mere car rather than an
aircraft. On the two-mile runway, and being mindful of the trust Mason had
placed in me, I ran it up to about 180mph seemingly in an instant.

           But this is not what distinguishes it from the Veyron. The
Bugatti is not only apocalyptically quick, it's also comfortable, quiet and
refined.

           Which is good for those who like long-distance cruising, but not
for those who want to be reminded what it's like to be alive. The Veyron has
a sense of remoteness, a result of its weight and electronic complexity,
that removes you from the driving experience.

           By contrast, nothing puts you closer to the action than this F1.
The steering provides feel comparable to running your fingers over the road.
Think about turning and it turns, tread just a smidgeon too hard in a tight
corner and you'll be facing the way you came before the first expletive
forms in your head. Get it right, however, and it will corner at a speed
that beggars belief.

           The V12's sound is mesmeric not simply for its race-bred purity
but also the jack-hammer volume. This is a car that will reward good driving
like no other and punish even slight mistakes with unparalleled severity.

           The truth is, apart from being the two fastest cars to set foot
on the public road, there is little common ground between the Bugatti and
the McLaren. Which is preferable depends on who you are. Would you rather
sit in supersonic luxury in seat 1C on Concorde, or be deafened, frightened
and thrilled beyond description flying an F-22 fighter? Me too.

           Andrew Frankel

           VITAL STATISTICS

           Model  McLaren F1 GTR
           Engine 6064cc, 12 cylinders
           Power  680bhp @ 7500rpm
           Torque 525 lb ft @ 4700rpm
           Transmission Six-speed manual
           Performance 0-60mph: 3.2sec
           Top speed: 240mph
           Price £627,000 in 1994; about £1m now
           Verdict No longer the fastest supercar, but still the best
           Rating Five stars