Bugatti's parent, Volkswagen, set out to build the fastest production car in the world and succeeded. The Veyron tops 407kph and costs a cool US$1.4 million
By EZRA DYER
In terms of sheer speed, power and history-making levels of engineering excess, the Bugatti Veyron is a success. Bugatti's parent, Volkswagen, set out to build the fastest production car in the world, and it did. There is a photo of the thing right there in the 2007 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, under the heading, Fastest Production Car. It is said to achieve a top speed of 407kph, and that's faster than any production car ever.

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By Alex Clark
A couple of weeks ago - and I apologize if this sounds irritatingly rarefied - I was having lunch with a friend, a former Booker Prize judge. We were discussing the formidable problem facing this year's jury (Howard Davies, Wendy Cope, Giles Foden, Ruth Scurr and Imogen Stubbs) in their search for the finest novel of this year. Hasn't it, we asked, been a disappointing year for fiction? And how would they find enough books to muster a longlist of any gravitas?

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