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At top speed
Reading and Use of English | 1BSU
1 Work in pairs. You are going to read an article about
a very fast car. Before you read:
How important are cars in your life?
What things do/would you consider when choosing
a car?
Bugatti Veyron
by Jeremy Clarkson
Utterly, stunningly, jaw-droppingly brilliant
When you push a car past 300 km/h, the world
actually becomes blurred, like an early Queen pop
video. The speed causes a terrifying vibration that
rattles your optic nerves, causing double vision.
This is not good when you’re covering 90 metres
a second. Happily, stopping distances become
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irrelevant because you won’t see the obstacle in the
first place. By the time you know it was there, you’ll
have gone through the windscreen.
1
But once you go past 320 km/h, the biggest problem
is the air. At 160 km/h it’s relaxed. At 240 km/h it’s
a breeze. But at 320 km/h it has sufficient power to
lift a jumbo jet off the ground. So getting a car to
behave itself in conditions like these is tough.
2
You might point out at this juncture that the
McLaren Formula One car can top 390 km/h, but
at that speed it is pretty much out of control. And
anyway the Bugatti is way, way faster than anything
else the roads have seen, but when you look at the
history of its development you’ll discover it’s rather
more than just a car.
100
2 Six paragraphs have been removed from the article
below. Read the article (but not the paragraphs
which have been removed).
t Note down in a few words what each paragraph in the
article is about.
t Underline any words and phrases that link the text
together, which will help you to place the missing
paragraphs when you read them.
His engineers were horrified. But they set to work
anyway, mating two Audi V8s to create an 8-litre W16
engine with four turbochargers. Needless to say, the end
result produced about as much power as the Earth’s core,
which is fine. Then things got tricky because the power
had to be harnessed.
When this had been done, the Veyron was shipped
to Sauber’s F1 wind tunnel where it quickly became
apparent that while the magic 1000 bhp* figure had been
achieved, they were miles off the target top speed of
400 km/h. The body of the car just wasn’t aerodynamic
enough. The bods at Sauber threw up their hands, saying
they only had experience of aerodynamics up to maybe
360 km/h, which is the effective top speed in Formula
One. Beyond this point Bugatti was on its own.
5
After some public failures, fires and accidents, they hit
on the idea of a car that automatically changes shape
depending on what speed you’re going. And that means
you can top 400 km/h. That’s 113m a second.
6
I didn’t care. On a recent drive across Europe I
desperately wanted to reach the top speed but I ran
out of road when the needle hit 386 km/h. Where,
astonishingly, it felt totally and utterly rock steady. It felt
sublime. From behind the wheel of a Veyron, France is
the size of a small coconut. I cannot tell you how good
this car is. I just don’t have the vocabulary.
From The Times
*Brake horsepower – a measure of the power of a vehicle’s engine