The Bugatti Veyron has done little more than populate our imaginations and add fuel to our feverish dreams.

However, if you plan to visit the Melbourne International Motor Show opening on February 29, you will get a chance to see the real thing in the flesh -- with one catch.

Other commitments mean the fastest road car on the planet will be limited to three show days only -- from 5pm to 10pm on Friday February 29, then from 10am to 10pm on Saturday, March 1 and Sunday, March 2.

The Bugatti's mid-mounted W16 engine displaces eight litres and uses four turbochargers to squeeze out as much as 736kW of power.

The 1.9-tonne Veyron is capable of an astounding top speed exceeding 400km/h and reaches 100km/h from a standstill in 2.5 seconds. The standing 400 metre run is dispatched in 10.2 seconds at 230km/h.

Drive is via a seven speed DSG sequential manual transmission to all four wheels.

Once road speed exceeds 220km/h, a rear spoiler deploys and the suspension drops the entire car 3.6 centimetres from its normal setting to a low-rider 8.9cm.

A top speed run requires the driver to activate a special "Top Speed Key" and then toggle, at standstill, a switch beside the seat, retracting the rear spoiler, closing the front air diffusers and dropping ground clearance even further, to just 6.5cm.

The Veyron has a carbon fibre monocoque body shell with magnesium, titanium and aluminium components.

The stratospheric, $2.7 million Bugatti went into full production in 2005 and is hand-built at a VW-built factory in Château St Jean in Molsheim, Alsace, France.

The Veyron is about as fascinating a supercar as the 6.1-litre BMW V12-powered McLaren F1 of the mid 1990s that weighed little more than one tonne and was, until 2005, the world’s fastest production car with a maximum recorded top speed of 386.7 km/h.

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