The Top Gear trio of Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond may be all fun and jokes in front of the camera, but despite their cunning wit and silly banter, these three all share a unique similarity: they know everything and anything there is to know about cars.
When they say a car is good or bad, their opinions carry more clout than the standard human because they’ve done their homework through countless hours of testing, free drives, and taped segments on the show. And now that we’re nearing the end of an amazingly eventful year, the trio have decided to finally release their choice of vehicles that will be included in the 11th Top Gear Awards.
With categories ranging from Hypercar of the Year, Grand Tourer of the Year, Coupe of the Year, and even Engine of the Year, the three hosts took everything they’ve seen, heard, and driven in 2010 to come up with a winner for each respective category.
In addition to these categories, Clarkson, May, and Hammond also picked their favorite cars of the year regardless of make, model, and type. Care to find out the award winners?
If you had ten million dollars to your name, nobody’s going to blame you if you spend one-fifth of that fortune on a car, provided it’s a 2011 Bugatti Veyron Super Sport. As the last and most powerful Veyron to ever come out of Bugatti’s production block, the Super Sport is without question, at the peak of the Veyron hierarchy.
EVO’s Chris Harris was afforded the opportunity to take the 1,200 horsepower beast out for a test drive. Harris has already been behind the wheel of some of the world’s fastest machines, but the Super Sport, as he will attest, is on a totally different level.
It’s so fast and addicting that Harris occasionally reminded himself to step off the gas as soon as stepping on it out of fear of breaking any laws. According to Harris, two seconds on the gas will send you to jail – if a cop sees you, that is. Five seconds on the pedal and you’ll be on-board one of the fastest machines on the planet.
That’s how ridiculously fast it is. If you’ve ever seen a multi-million dollar car that’s worth every buck and penny of its asking price, it’s the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport. Hands down.
While we can’t begin to comprehend the rationale of turning an original 6-Series Coupe into a fake Veyron, some owners – like this one, apparently – think that re-upping your car into something that looks like one of the most expensive exotics on the planet is a way to grab some serious attention. Not that we’d dispute that, we just find it a little absurd considering that a 6-Series Coupe is a perfectly cool car to have under any circumstances.
Having said that, we think that it’s a pretty good take on the Veyron, one that should fool a lot of people especially if they don’t notice the minor detail of this car’s hood being a little longer and less rounded than the Bugatti original.
Should we really be surprised that the Bugatti Veyron has been given the distinction of being the worst mileage offender in the US market? No? Yeah, we didn’t think so either.
The superduper car, the current record-holder of fastest car on the planet, came out of the Environment Protection Agency’s study with a mileage rating of just eight mpg – 29.4 liters/100 km – in city driving and 15 mpg – 15.5 liters/100 km - on the highway. Ouch.
On the opposite end of the spectrum and grinning mightily is Toyota’s venerable hybrid car, the Prius, which scored a mileage rating of 51 mpg – 4.6 liters/100 km – and 48 mpg – 4.9 km/100 km - thereby staking claim to EPA’s mythical crown of being the most fuel-efficient vehicle on US soil.
EPA’s study only confirmed what a lot of us already know by now. The Bugatti Veyron is one of the fastest, most powerful, and most expensive cars in the world, so you can pretty much expect that it doesn’t care so much when it comes to guzzling down fuel. After all, the people who have these cars are also those that can afford to buy their own gas stations. On the flip side, you’ll never mistake the Toyota Prius – and other Toyotas and Hondas, for that matter – as a car that can outrun law enforcement officers in the highway. The car’s calling card is efficiency, a word that doesn’t exist in Bugatti’s dictionary.
Bugatti must be really confident in the buying power of the rich folks of India considering that the company has introduced the Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport in the country despite the ridiculous 110% import tax tacked to items like foreign exotic cars.
Add the car’s cost to the tax it comes with and to be able to purchase a Veyron in the country would mean that you would have to pay a staggering $3.6 million. Apparently, Bugatti is undeterred by the mammoth tax cars like the Veyron will be given, opting to focus more on the huge potential of the spending power of wealthy locals, which, according to analysts, could reach $14.7 billion as fast as 2015.
Satya Bagla, head of Exclusive Motors Pvt., the company that carries high-end brands Bugatti, Bentley, and Lamborghini, said that the Indian market, specifically the wealthy, are beginning to open up their bank accounts. “People have more spending power and are getting more aware of owning beautiful things,” she said.
“They are more ready to show their wealth.” Must be nice.
