Bugatti Veyron

You look down at the beautifully machined aluminum steering wheel, bathed in the kind of opulence you expect to see only in movies. Your vision darts around the cabin, soaking in the glorious blue leather as your fingertips run over every inch of the trim.

Then, as if drawn in by some sort of gravitational pull, your hand moves towards the starter button. Your heart starts to race, your hands become sweatier than you even thought possible. You whisper a silent prayer in both anticipation and fear that nothing will go wrong. And this is all before you even start the car. Truth be told, I’ve been fortunate enough to drive some of the most wild automobiles on the planet. But it's this car—the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse—that caused my hands to physically shake before pressing the ignition and releasing all 1,200 raging horses from the ludicrous 16.4-liter W16 engine. But with a deep breath, I steadied my hands, and ignited the king of all supercars.

The Devil is in the Details But before we get into the good stuff, trust me when I say it's the tiny details that make the Bugatti Veyron such a triumph of engineering. For instance, one of the most interesting pieces of information about the car's development comes from the valve stem caps on the tires. Due to the immense rotational forces applied to the caps when the Veyron guns for top speed, Bugatti needed to essentially re-invent the valve stem cap. A normal cap, due to its shape and weight, had the possibility of rippin...