The Bugatti Veyron was never meant to be the world’s fastest car. It was meant to be a whole lot more besides — the most expensive and exclusive for starters. But the trouble is, for some tastes the €1m (£897,000), 253mph powerhouse was just a tad, well, common.

Imagine the horror when you arrive at your favourite charity ball of the year, only to discover that Sheikh What’s-His-Face arrived five minutes earlier, bagging the best front-of-house parking spot for his identical Veyron. “I’m afraid we’ll have to park yours round the back, sir,” are not words the ultra-rich like hearing.

With this super-Veyron, you shouldn’t have that problem. Because Mansory, the luxury automotive company that created this Vincero, is building only three. And each one is priced at €1.7m (£1.52m) — sufficient, we suspect, to sort the oil barons from the hedge fund managers.

In that rare recession-proof stratosphere, this might just be the best way for the super-rich to show their friends who’s boss. They have Kourosh Mansory to thank. He made his name with loud and proud interpretations of Aston Martins, Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. His customers include Middle Eastern princes, European A-listers and Sylvester Stallone.

Recently he branched out from the British brands, reworking the Ferrari 599 GTB, but there was still the forbidden fruit, the one car no tuning house dared go near: Bugatti’s Veyron. Yet temptation proved too much when Mansory’s importer in Dubai commissioned three special editions. “The Veyron was such a special car, you can’t really win when you tune it, you can only lose,” he said. “But our importer wanted the cars and we knew it would be good publicity, so we decided to go ahead and create something truly special.”

Being handed the distinctly VW key to such an expensive set of wheels wasn’t the rush I had anticipated. Rolling off for my test drive of the world’s most expensive car, I couldn’t help but feel that to have fun with the Vincero you’d need to be the sort of person with enough gold in your Swiss vault to buy a Caribbean island on impulse — and a private jet to get there. Just to keep it fuelled up, oil would have to spurt from a well at the bottom of your garden ... or country.

So for the first few miles of the test drive, the telltale power meter proved just how little of the Vincero’s extra power I was using. Its W16 engine is tuned to 1109bhp, versus a “mere” 987bhp in the standard Veyron. I was using 50bhp; a learner driver would probably do better.

The eight-litre engine was barely audible: it was time to summon the courage to put all four turbochargers to good use and introduce the throttle to the finely woven carpet.

This opened up a whole new time-space continuum. The Vincero floors you like you’ve just been flattened by the Metropolitan police riot squad. Vast tracts of land separating it from the horizon disappeared in an instant, and each vast tyre struggled to harness its share of the power (about 277bhp).

It is louder, too. The full-throttle aural assault was so immense that I was left dabbing my ears for signs of blood. Yet the company is coy about its performance, quoting the same figures as the regular Veyron (0-60mph in 2.5sec and 253mph), though it must be quicker.

Having driven a “standard” Veyron the day before this test drive made for an eye-opening comparison. How, for example, would the 132lb weight reduction (achieved through carbon-fibre body panels) improve the handling? Would the new exhaust, air intake and outlet deliver a more noticeable surge towards the horizon?

The truth is the Veyron is already so overwhelming that the Vincero’s differences are hard to recognise on the public road. One customer asked for 200bhp more, but Mansory refused. The tyres, not the engine, are the limiting factor, he reasoned sanely.