The words barely penetrated my waking consciousness, but something registered from the pages of a weekly British car magazine: "Bu-gatti Veyron replacement will have over 1500 hp and hit 290 mph." Whatever, I couldn't care less, I thought, as I went off to water the tomato plants. Ten years ago I'd have struggled to suppress my delight and frantically written a column fantasizing over the concept of 290 on a public highway. Not now. Why the ennui? Maybe I've just become an old fart. Maybe the memory of a sudden lane change at 227 mph in the original hyper-Bug hit me. But really, the very-high-performance car currently sits at a crossroads, and the Veyron replacement is on the wrong side. It's a faceless collection of numbers designed to appeal to the offensively rich, most of whom will never see 100 mph in it. I defended the Veyron for years, citing the pioneering use of a dual-clutch transmission and the car's vast yet usable performance, rather than doing the easy thing and moaning that it wasn't a McLaren F1.
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