For the driver who wants to answer that question with the ultimate response, there's the Bugatti Veyron 16.4. With a US$1.4 million price tag and a 1,001-horsepower engine, its maker didn't even have to do anything new to stir up excitement. It put up the exact same display it did last year, brought the same car and had no trouble drawing a crowd on preview day.
Bugatti spokesman Georges Keller said the rare ride, which boasts a top speed of 407kph, is really quite reasonable to use to get around.
"It's as easy to drive as a Golf or a Passat, but you've got a lot more performance," said Keller, who demonstrates an amazing capacity for understatement. "It's very easy to handle. You put it in drive and send your wife out to pick up the newspaper."
If she pushed it up to top speed, didn't run out of gas and somehow avoided the California Highway Patrol, she could leave Los Angeles, pick up the paper in San Diego and return in under an hour. It beats having to wait for delivery.
That's ridiculous, but that's what cars like this are all about. Most will never see the rigors of the street, let alone maximum velocity. They're expensive showpieces for people who don't mind dropping US$500,000 on a Lamborghini, so long as no one else on the block has one.
"To really enjoy and get the full use of the Lamborghini, you've got to know how to drive it," said Carrie Spencer, who handles public relations for Automobili Lamborghini. "Some people will buy these and never even drive them."
In that sense, and probably only that one, they're much like the folks roaming the show floor.
"Guys come to a show like this to take pictures of the cars and the girls," said Taylor Erickson, who suited up in a skintight outfit to pose next to a slew of supercars on the way into one of the massive halls. "It's a car they'll probably never get to drive, and a girl they'll probably never get to date."
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