2007 Bugatti Veyron

"We can't let you drive the car alone, of course," says Bugatti's molto soave Swiss public relations man, Georges Keller, who'd flown in the night before our departure. Uh-oh. Party poopers. This could seriously dampen our secret plan to have Sherman wire up his test equipment and record those numbers. Keller introduces me to my chaperone, Pierre-Henri Raphanel, an Algerian-born Frenchman who's raced everything, including a couple of underdog Formula 1 cars, in his twenty-year career. He has sunglasses parked atop his dark mane, smoldering black eyes, tight black jeans, black racing shoes, and a gorgeous black leather coat with the collar turned up against an ultrachic magenta-and-lime plaid shirt. I'm not sure whether I should worry about how I'm dressed or about how I'm going to drive this supercar under supervision. I don't have to worry about either. Raphanel is on the phone immediately, and he will continue to be on the phone for the next two days. He won't notice anything if I just keep it between the lines. He might not even notice Sherman. Have I mentioned the non-English-speaking German technicians? That would be the affable Stephen and Georg, trailing along in a rented Chrysler Town & Country minivan. To make this an honest coast-to-coast run, our international cast of thousands heads south on A1A, looking for a nice beach shot on the Atlantic. Not thirty minutes later, a Honda RC51 motorcycle pulls alongside us, and the rider gives us a c'mon sign with a low hand, then roars off. We don't play. Here's a park with sand and palms for our shot. The Honda roars back. Elizabeth Proctor hops off the back. Elizabeth had called her boyfriend, Mike Conrad, the day before, when she saw our car around Amelia Island. "What car has a backwards E and a B?" she asked him. "He said, 'You're kidding me, right. You didn't see that!' This is stupid," she grins, aiming her phone camera, "but you gotta love it, right?" Enough of the two-lanes. We jump onto I-10 and head west. I cannot bring myself to floor it. It seems so juvenile, and that French guy is sitting next to me, and there is so much power coiled in both of my hands gripping the steering wheel that I can't do anything but gently press the throttle and let some of it out. Oh, yeah. Boom, we're off and running. Well, not exactly boom. The Veyron's engine acoustics are not thundering like a V-12 Ferrari's but more like a turbine's. You hear a whistling windup in the echo chamber of the cabin, and then it's just outta there. Sherman describes the engine as a "white ball of underhood light compared with the growling, shaking, grunting beasts that propel other supercars." It is right and good that such engineering magnificence sits out in the open, no cover keeping it (or the massive heat it generates) from the elements or admiring glances. I quickly learn that, unless I want to drive it like a jackhammer, it's best to put the shift lever all the way right into Drive rather than leaving it in manual mode. Then, if you nail the throttle, it won't just slam into gear, about knocking you out in the process. If you click that selector to the right twice, you get sport mode, which will have the seven-speed dual-clutch (think Audi DSG) automatic running to the redline in every gear. It's good for a laugh, but Raphanel doesn't look like a yee-hawer. I practice driving way too fast for a while, pressing harder and harder, then stand down, the brakes complying as mightily and efficiently as the accelerator. We are sucking up miles at a prodigious pace. Interstate 10 is thick with semis and Harleys heading west at a fair clip. We go with the flow at 85 to 90 mph, then rip past until it's time to haul it down for a pit stop, somewhere near Monticello.