Bugatti Veyron Almost Loses Drag Race with AMG GT S, and There’a Reason for That

The clip below shows a short battle between Mercedes-AMG’s fastest current offering and the old Bugatti Veyron that’s quietly waiting to be retired but can still pack quite a punch. Or rather a kick, as it’s 1,001 horsepower we’re talking about here.

That’s 19 hp short of being the exact double of what the Mercedes-AMG GT S is generating. And, from a purely mathematical point of view, double the power would make perfect sense. The Bugatti uses an eight-liter W16 turbo engine formed by joining two four-liter W8 engines at the crank. The Mercedes-AMG GT, as you probably very well know, has a four-liter twin-turbo V8 engine that hasn’t been joined at the crank with anything. Unbalanced? Yes, you could say that.

But there’s more. The Bug comes with four-wheel drive, a feature that helps it make good use of that immense power reserve and make sure it finds its way to the asphalt. The acceleration figures for the Veyron are enough to intimidate even some hardcore drag machines, with 60 mph (97 km/h) coming in 2.5 seconds, 100 mph (160 km/h) in 5.5 seconds, and 150 mph (242 km/h) in 9.8 seconds. 250 mph (402 km/h) - which is three mph (5 km/h) away from its top speed - comes after 42.3 seconds, so there aren’t a lot of places in this world where it can actually be achieved.

So how could the Bugatti “almost” lose the fight with a rear-wheel-driven car with half the power (OK, and a lot less weight)? Well, there’s only one word for it: cheating.

With the starting mark getting closer, the guy driving the Mercedes-AMG GT S ignores everything his mother told him when he was young and floors the accelerator early. Like, very early. The Mercedes flies to about 100 feet in front, but the Bugatti passenger isn’t disturbed one bit, “a little bit of cheating there, but that’s OK.” Here’s the footage from both cars: