Had the Bugatti Veyron been man-like, it would have been Superman!

A little back story: Bugatti, the legendary marque of European race and road cars run by Ettore and Jean Bugatti, père et fils, effectively ended the day in 1939 when Jean crashed the Le Mans-winning T 57C "Tank" on a country road outside Molsheim. According to company lore, the accident occurred when Jean tried to avoid a drunken letter-carrier on a bicycle, which gives you some idea of the esteem in which France holds the civil service.

In the late 1990s, VW's imperious leader, Ferdinand Piech, set about to recreate Bugatti, more or less out of thin air. The company restored Bugatti's lovely château and orangerie in Molsheim (in Alsace) and tore down and rebuilt the stables and garages, historically accurate down to the last brick and board.

The business plan, if you can call it that, was to construct 300 cars called the Bugatti Veyron 16.4. The 1,001-hp Veyron (around $1.6 million) was to be the fastest production car on Earth, with a top speed of 253 mph. When I drove the car in Sicily in 2005 I figured, well, that was that. The economics of beating such a record were decidedly not in any company's financial interest. It's estimated VW Group has invested about a half-billion euros in Bugatti.

But then an outfit in Washington state named Shelby Supercars—no relation to the famous race driver—managed to convince the Guinness records folks that its raw-as-tartare, twin-turbo, 1,200-plus-hp Ultimate Aero SSC was a production car meant for real consumers, and in October 2007, with a run of 257 mph, it pilfered the world record from Bugatti.

The disdain coming from Molsheim was as acrid as clutch smoke.

At the Super Sport introduction this week in Spain, company historian Julius Kruta denied that the Super Sport was built with the intention of taking back the land-speed record. The Ultimate Aero SSC "was not even on our radar." Right.

The Super Sport, said Mr. Kruta, was built in response to customers who, incredibly enough, asked for a sportier version of the Veyron—because, obviously, the Veyron was such a sissy cupcake of a car. The company plans to build 30 to 40 Super Sports and sell them for $2.5 million to $3 million. Operators are standing by.

The list of modifications to the Veyron is long and expensive. The car now has four fuel pumps, compared with the Veyron's two, feeding the larger quad turbochargers. A less restrictive (and louder) exhaust system was developed. That and some engine-management programming increases torque to a hilarious 1,500 Newton-meters (1,103 pound-feet), and peak torque is higher in the rev band. Suspension-wise, the ride height was raised slightly (to accommodate greater high-speed downforce); and the air suspension, half-shafts, links and wheels were lightened, reinforced and laced tighter. The biggest changes were aerodynamic. The Veyron's lovely, roof-mounted air scoops are replaced with so-called NACA ducts. The main grille is larger, and the entire front of the car is more ventilated to provide cooling for brakes and the front Haldex differential. A wild double diffuser has been arranged in the rear.

The aesthetic result? The hackneyed comparison would be to say the Super Sport looks like some kind of space ship, but if extraterrestrials exist, I seriously doubt they are this cool.

At the same time, the Super Sport was obliged to retain all the drivability and refined splendor of the original Veyron, except faster. "This wasn't easy," said chief engineer Wolfgang Schreiber, and I bet it wasn't. Driven at normal, human-scaled speeds, the car is positively docile. The Super Sport's ligaments are little more concussive, yes, and the engine noise more pronounced. But the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, the real heart of this car, slips between ratios as silkenly as a Lexus.

Still, I'm not sure what this car is. It's not a sports car, exactly, because despite the heroic use of carbon fiber everywhere, it weighs 4,043 pounds (110 pounds less than the Veyron). Also, it's all-wheel-drive, which means it's just about impossible to get it to rotate on the throttle, even with stability control turned off. Thanks to its enormous hydraulic rear wing, it summons up to 880 pounds of downforce, pressing the car down on its gigantic Michelin tires (14 inches wide on the rear). All of that makes the car majestically stable and locked down, with phenomenal amounts of cornering grip (1.4 g's). But it also means the car is about as flickable and tossable as an aircraft carrier.

So what is this car? Well, for one thing, it's a motivational tool, a performance piece, a tour de force from a company—VW Group—which means to overtake Toyota as the world's largest car maker.