In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Volkswagen decided to acquire Bugatti and take on an ambitious project in the automotive world. Their goal was to create a car with 1000 horsepower and a top speed of 250 miles per hour, something that had never been done before.
To give you an idea of how big of an achievement this was, other famous supercar makers during that time, like Ferrari, Mercedes, and Porsche, were making impressive cars with around 600-650 horsepower. Bugatti wanted to go way beyond that.
To reach this incredible horsepower target, Bugatti came up with a unique solution. They combined two V8 engines to make a quad-turbocharged W16 engine. At first, it didn’t quite reach the 1000-horsepower mark, so Bugatti’s engineers added four turbochargers to create an eight-liter quad-turbocharged W16, finally achieving their goal of 1000 horsepower.
However, making that much power also creates an enormous amount of heat. Unlike regular cars with just one radiator, the Bugatti Veyron has ten radiators to keep the engine cool.
With a top speed of 253 miles per hour, the Veyron can use up its entire 100-liter fuel tank in just 12 minutes! It also breathes in a massive amount of air, about 47,000 liters per minute, which is equivalent to what an average person breathes in over four days. The car has huge air intakes on the roof and sides to feed all that air to its massive engine, allowing it to perform at an incredible level.
