Greece needs money more than Bugatti does

MY other half, who's German, is infuriated that her country is having to pay for 53-year-olds in Greece who've just retreated to a retirement of yachts and Ouzo.

The Greek economy is knackered, and there's almost nothing the Berliners, the Frankfurters and the Stuttgarters can do about it, although I do have a suggestion. Borrow some cash from the country's largest car company, because they've obviously got loads of it.

How else do you explain the news that - while you were queuing at the Job Centre - they've reclaimed the title of world's fastest supercar? The Bugatti Veyron Supersport might be built in France and named after a Gallic engineering genius, but the funding that made it happen is all Volkswagen's. It's where the money they made on that Polo you've just bought went.

Building an even faster version of a car that already did 253mph just to reclaim a record just seems a trifle tasteless at a time when entire countries are going bust, but they've gone and done it anyway. Bugatti - or rather Volkswagen - make a loss on every one they sell, so they're throwing money away at 268mph. Money which could have been spent on Mr Papandreou instead.

I'm not one of these road safety bores who argues every car should do 70mph and no more - otherwise we'd all still be driving Ford Anglias - but why not make Bugattis the late Ettore, the company's founder, would have been proud of? Cars with epic engineering, no question, but ones which excel on roads and racetracks rather than one endless straight at the VW test track. It'd cost less than a Veyron or a villa on the Greek coast, that's for sure.

If you're reading this and you're eight years old you might think owning the world's fastest car is a fine idea, but it is't. Even though I've never driven the big Bug and probably never will I'll happily wager that anything even slightly less surreal - even the Lamborghini Gallardo or the Audi R8, which are also VW products - will be much more rewarding on real, tangible roads.

And anyway; Volkswagen now sells a stupendously quick car which even Greek pensioners might be interested in. It's called the Porsche 911.