The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [96]
For most of the shoot I ran the Bug in handling mode, which was good for 233mph, only switching to speed mode, with the wing down, when I needed a bit of extra juice. As you passed around 140 the downforce sucked the car into the road and the suspension reassuringly locked itself in. The amount of powered rubber in contact with the ground meant the Bug was always poised to take a direction. You held on and drove it, 100 per cent of the time.
Beyond 180, ahem, the aero balance started to favour the rear and made it less willing to dart around.
As we crossed the border into Switzerland we started seeing more German plates and seriously powerful Porsches. Good sport.
I noticed an orange ant in my mirror, closing at a rate of about 80mph. Appropriately enough, some hard Haus music started pounding out of the radio. You only live once.
‘Watch this, Frenchie.’
I notched down to fourth and let the 911 Turbo run past at flat chat, then nailed the throttle. We matched his speed within a second, then splash, bye-bye Porker. For good measure I opened the tap all the way, leaving the boy marooned in the fast lane.
The Bug firmed up, tyres hissing and roaring. At 230mph, a sparsely populated autobahn metamorphosed into a Grand Prix circuit. Dotted white lines became a seamless blur. Cat’s-eyes pummelled the undercarriage like speed bumps. The slightest kink in the carriageway became a corner.
Your eyes only moved from the road’s horizon for milliseconds, anticipating the cumbersome trajectories of the other ‘static’ road users well in advance as the Bug gobbled tarmac at a rate of 340 feet per second, the length of a football pitch in a blink of an eye.
A line of flashing lights whipped into view, blocking the fast lane. Traffic accumulated. I pulled the ripcord and hit the brakes, knocking the Bug out of speed mode. The rear wing went vertical to form an air-brake, the suspension adjusted smoothly to the interruption and the ABS crackled underfoot.
They told me it could stop dead from 250 in ten seconds. What bull. It took less than that.
If the Bugatti was the fastest car in the world, the second fastest was the Audi RS6 containing the VW engineers who were trying to keep an eye on us. Whenever I sped off, the Audi would loom into view a few moments later. As our journey progressed, a mutual respect developed between the TG crew and the Teutonic boffins who were supporting us.
I lost count of how many times we up and passed the camera and the number of roads we did them on. Through kaleidoscopic tunnels, stunning archways of trees, tiny Italian villages, across open fields, up twisting mountain roads, past wind farms, vineyards and fast-flowing rivers, the visual feast of continental Europe unfolded before our windscreen.
The trip seemed to end as suddenly as it had begun. In Milan I reluctantly handed back the keys for the final time. My life would never be the same again. The Bug was being snatched away from us by a journo for review. He’d been hounding Nigel all week.
To say I was jealous would be like claiming that Cindy Crawford was mildly attractive. I could only console myself with the hope that my rival for the Bug’s affections might be a plump, balding man with glasses. In that, at least, I wasn’t disappointed.
Chapter 23
Track Record
I was reunited with the Bug when the time came to spank it around the Dunsfold circuit. Bugatti didn’t have one available, so Top Gear convinced a private owner to hand over his keys. Amazingly, he only had one stipulation …
Our new fast-talking Series Producer, Pat Doyle, had been around the TV block; he was as canny as a one-armed snake catcher. His thankless task was to try and control our spiralling budget and keep a leash on the pack of hounds chasing editorial nirvana. He had a curly brown mullet and a mouth that beamed whenever something unconscionable or surreal was unfolding.