How do you exceed the ultimate? How do you improve on the fastest car ever made? Bugatti’s epic, Biblically-fast Veyron was a moonshot to compare with the likes of Concorde and climbing Everest. For its sequel, the French company was faced with an incredible uphill task.

Luckily, the men and women from Molsheim were more than up to the challenge. For the equally mindbending Super Sport, Bugatti turned the wick up on the 8.0-litre quad-turbo, sixteen cylinder engine from 1000ps to 1200ps (or 1,184bhp). Torque rises too, from 922lb/ft to a scarcely believable 1106 lb/ft.

That is necessary when the car in question needs to hit a derestricted top speed of 431kph (267mph) – improving on the original’s 407kph. These numbers made it officially the fastest production automobile in the world at the time of its release – a record that has only been eclipsed by its younger brother, the titanic 1600bhp Chiron Super Sport 300+. And all this in car with a luscious leather interior, a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission that is as easy to drive as a Golf with standard four wheel drive and all the luxury you could conceivably ask for.

Our Veyron SS – no.43 of a total 47 units built – is an original GCC-spec example, first delivered in 2012 to Kuwait, with a rare $250,000 exposed carbon specification. It has covered just 6,250km from new, has been freshly serviced in March 2020 and comes with full documentation and all spares, including a European Certificate of Conformity.