Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse: Fastest Roadster

When the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport introduced the world to a 1,200-hp version of Bugatti’s W16 engine, customers wanted the same power with the roof down. Bugatti’s engineers spent the following months developing exactly that: the Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse, unveiled in 2012 as the open-top evolution of the Super Sport rather than the standard Veyron.

Building a roofless hypercar with that much power presented real engineering challenges. Removing a fixed roof costs structural rigidity, something normally compensated for with weight or reduced performance, neither of which Bugatti was willing to accept. Minus the roof, the Grand Sport Vitesse was engineered to match the acceleration and overall performance of its hardtop sibling, a deliberate statement that an open-top hyper sports car didn’t need to compromise.

The proof came on April 6, 2013, at Volkswagen’s Ehra-Lessien proving ground, the same facility where the Super Sport had set its own record three years earlier. The Grand Sport Vitesse reached 408.84 km/h (254.04 mph), setting a new world speed record for a production open-top vehicle, a record Bugatti states still stands today. It would go on to be the final model in the Veyron lineage before the Chiron took its place as Bugatti’s flagship.