For the record, I’ve never been to Idaho and I don’t know too much about the state besides it being the country’s biggest source of potatoes. But I do know that it hosts the Sun Valley Road Rally, a gathering of supercar owners who are afforded the opportunity to drive their cars to their full limit on a closed section of road. It’s an annual event, and over the last few years, it has hosted some of the finest exotics in the business. This year’s event took place on Saturday, July 23, 2016 and from what I’ve heard, there was one supercar that really stood out from the rest: a bespoke Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse L’Or Rouge that its proud owner affectionately calls “Hellbug.”
The name probably alludes to its red-and-black, two-tone color scheme with the fancy striping. It’s a hard car to miss when it was idle. But once it came time to actually flexing its muscle, Hellbug became an impossibly difficult car to keep up with. That’s because the driver and owner of the car was able to hit an incredible 230 mph on the road. It may not have approached the Veyron GSV’s overall top speed of 254 mph, but just watching the car’s odometer slowly go past 230 mph is a sight in it of itself.
It’s hard to imagine what it would be like going at that speed on a public road. But every year, supercar owners get to do just that at the Sun Valley Road Rally. And, just as it did at last year’s gathering when it hit 235.7 mph, Hellbug once again stole the show for all the right reasons.