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By Root 854 0

one you were in. If you floored it in ‘D’ there was a slight delay as the gearbox considered the most powerful cog. By the time you realised what was going on, the acceleration thumped you into the back of the seat and you entered warp speed. Nothing on the autoroute moved like this. It was like flying a UFO after someone had pressed the pause button on the rest of the traffic.

For any good road trip, you needed a wingman. Frenchie was a loveable wide-boy from the production team who, as he constantly reminded me, had once owned an MX-5: ‘Rear-wheel drive, did doughnuts, my pride and joy, tragically caught fire and burned to a cinder one day …’ He wiped his eye.

Frenchie took his duties seriously, kept the Bug brimmed with snacks and occasionally noted signposts between bursts of neck-breaking laughter every time I so much as tickled the throttle.

There was a burst of static from the radio. ‘Turn right at this junction, please, we’re going left to film you …’ We’d almost forgotten Nigel was there. ‘No, sorry, come with us now. Take the left.’

The left lane was heaving with traffic at a red light whilst my lane was green. I hooked the indicator to a chorus of French horns.

‘I feel your pain. A thousand pairs of Gallic eyes burning into the side of your faces.’

‘Thanks, Nige.’

Actually, the eyes didn’t give a monkey’s about the side of our faces. They were simply captivated by the Veyron. We drew a crowd wherever we went. As we thundered through the bucolic countryside people waved from the fields, and children ran towards it as we cruised slowly through the villages. Back on the open road, tree-lined boulevards whirled by as I snapped at the gear paddle like a junkie on a crack pipe.

We stopped to film at a remote wood and a crowd gathered within minutes, young and old, some taking photos, some just marvelling that such things could be. The Bug made everyone smile; it conjured anew the innocent delight we can all feel when admiring a beautifully crafted automobile.

‘OK, Mr Collins, time to move on.’

Nigel set up a camera in a copse for a panoramic shot of the Bugatti crossing a small suspension bridge over a sparkling river. I zapped across in the blink of an eye.

‘Fuck me,’ Frenchie groaned from the footwell, ‘did you feel the G as we came round the bend?’

I was grinning like an idiot. ‘Mega, isn’t it?’

Nigel was back on the radio almost immediately. ‘Let me know as soon as you’ve turned, please.’

We had a specific time permit to film through the Mont Blanc tunnel, crossing the border from France to Italy, so we couldn’t hang around.

After a brisk contretemps with a construction truck we made it back on to the main drag and overtook everything except the fuel stations. I coasted down every mountain in neutral to save fuel, using modest blats to sail past other cars like they were signposts. Even so, we guzzled fuel. Nigel was beginning to tire of my incessant requests for a top-up.

We made it to the tunnel in the nick of time. Ben Joiner hopped in with me to film as the orange lighting danced around the interior. With CCTV monitoring every millimetre, I didn’t break the speed limit, but I flicked the throttle as soon as we were out and watched Ben’s smile spread from ear to ear.

We set up at a motorway service station to do an all-wheel-drive launch to 100mph, which the Bug achieved in five seconds. The VW engineers had to phone Bugatti’s head office in Germany for permission to engage the launch control system. We changed the setting from stun to kill by turning a magic key behind the seat. The whale tail wing rose behind me and the Bug’s active suspension lowered the nose into the ground like a raging bull, ready to charge.

‘Nigel, why don’t you hop in for this one?’ I said.

He climbed in reluctantly, scooched his long body into the passenger footwell so he couldn’t be seen, and set the cameras running. I applied the brake with my left foot, which acted like a clutch, floored the gas with my right and then lifted the anchor.

The car charged forward like the Millennium Falcon going into hyper-space,