Targa by Stilo

What, relative to expectations, is the worst motoring experience of your life? Mine was doing a lap of the Piccolo Circuito della Madonie, otherwise known as the Targa Florio course. And it was all the fault of the Bugatti Veyron.

This was 2005 and being a Bugatti press launch I’d naturally flown to Sicily by Learjet and then been transferred by equally private helicopter over the mountains to the sumptuous private villa where a choice of three, one thousand horsepower Veyrons awaited.

We headed out onto some of Europe’s greatest roads in a car that will reach 200mph faster than most cars reach 100mph. Beside me sat a Bugatti engineer who confirmed the police would not be troubling us today. Which made me wonder whether the roads were the only reason Bugatti had chosen to launch the car on that particular island.