Ehra-Lessien

Ehra-Lessien is a municipality in the district of Gifhorn, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The Municipality Ehra-Lessien includes the villages of Ehra and Lessien.

Volkswagen Group test track
Volkswagen Group owns a test track facility in Ehra-Lessien, some 18 km north of its Wolfsburg factory. The facility was built during the Cold War. The location was chosen because, at the time, it was in a no-fly zone only 10 km west of the border between East Germany and West Germany, and thus secret prototypes could be tested out of sight of potential rivals. The track is currently used by all Volkswagen Group subsidiaries and marques, such as Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti, SEAT, Škoda, and Porsche.

The facility features 96 km of private tarmac, which includes a large variety of road surfaces and curves, used as test tracks to evaluate new and prototype vehicles. More significantly, there is a high speed circuit with a straight approximately 8.7 km long. Although the straight portion of the track is perfectly flat and level for the entire length, when standing at one end of the straight one cannot see the far end due to the curvature of the Earth. Banked corners at both ends of the circuit allow for a high entry and exit speed to and from the straight, and to increase average speed during the 20 km lap. The straight is especially useful for determining vehicle top speed, and is one of the few places on Earth that the Bugatti Veyron or the McLaren F1 can reach their top speed.

Notably, the top speeds of the Veyron and the McLaren F1 were recorded along this straight. In Episode 2 of Season 9, aired on 4 February 2007 on BBC Two's Top Gear, presenter James May reached 407.5 km/h in a Bugatti Veyron thus breaking the world land speed record for a road legal vehicle. On 26 June 2010 May broke his own record in a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport with 1200 bhp, reached 417.9 km/h However shortly after this, the record was broken by Bugatti test driver Pierre Henri Raphanel, who recorded a speed of 431.072 km/h (Top Gear Episode 5, Season 15). The facility also appeared on National Geographic Channel's Man-Made, in episodes about the Bugatti Veyron and Chiron.

On 2 August 2019, Bugatti used a specially modified Chiron and broke the record again, reaching 490.48 km/h. The top speed was set by Andy Wallace and verified by the TÜV (Germany's Technical Inspection Association). Reportedly, Bugatti had spent the prior twelve months preparing for this new high speed record run. This high speed run is demonstrated on the Top Gear YouTube channel, on a video, posted on 2 September 2019.