Bugatti Supercars E-Book

Lance Cole

• Herausgeber: The Crowood Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 421

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

In a fresh view of Bugatti, this book frames the design highlights of a series of Bugatti supercars that colour the marque's journey from its origins as an early 'supercar' to its reborn reality as a modern 'hypercar'. These Bugatti's have been chosen to tell a story that uniquely covers the original Bugatti's and the very latest iterations of Bugatti. Joining the two Bugatti camps, old and new, together creates a new roadmap of Bugatti coverage that is essential reading for both those familiar with the marque and for more recent Bugatti enthusiasts across a wider motoring landscape. Blending engineering, styling, art and more, Bugatti's unique story has stretched over one hundred years, giving us cars that capture the soul through exquisite engineering and design. Illustrated with stunning photographs, many of which are previously unpublished, the seasoned enthusiast, the established aficionado and the younger generation of Bugatti newcomers are provided with an up-to-date album of Bugatti information. The text is a guide by which to enter and explore Bugatti and also a conversation about Bugatti details and delights for those with deeper knowledge of the marque.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Introduction

Bugatti Timeline

CHAPTER 1 ETTORE: POLYMATH CREATIVE

CHAPTER 2 BRESCIA: PRECURSOR OF THE SUPERCAR LINEAGE

CHAPTER 3 TYPE 35: THE WORLD’S FIRST SUPERCAR?

CHAPTER 4 TANKS, TYPES AND TOURS DE FORCE

CHAPTER 5 TYPE 57: THE BIRTH OF THE 1930s SUPERCARS

CHAPTER 6 TYPE 57: AÉROLITHE AND ATLANTIC

CHAPTER 7 MONOPOSTO AND MAGNESIUM

CHAPTER 8 EB110: REINCARNATION REVISITED

CHAPTER 9 NEW JOURNEY: VEYRON TO CHIRON

CHAPTER 10 CENTODIECI AND MORE

Appendix I: Specification Tables

Appendix II: The Bugatti Trust

Bibliography and References

Index

Defining design: Type 35 radiator and design language captured in tribute seen on the front of Chris Hudson’s unusually hued Bugatti Type 35B.

Ettore’s livery on a late-model Chiron long-tail captured during the Bugatti Grand Tour of America 2023.

This torpedo-bodied 1927 Type 30, chassis #4003, is owned by Peter Zinck, President of the Bugatti Club Denmark and is regularly driven by King Frederik of Denmark who is a Bugatti fan.

INTRODUCTION

THE BUGATTI ETHOS: BRILLIANCE BEYOND COMPARISON

Many years ago there was a wonderful magazine called Supercar Classics, which contained within its title the proof that the term ‘supercar’ had a history. A supercar did not have to be brand new: it could be an older classic that was a supercar, a precursor to more contemporary supercars. Only a few of the marques of these past supercars have produced a modern car of supercar or ‘hypercar’ status. One such is Bugatti, but this came about via a reincarnation of the Bugatti name and brand, which leaves the door open to argument over what is a Bugatti, let alone what is a supercar or hypercar, and whether a revived brand can truly be said to live in the ethos of its original DNA.

The answer to that is wait and see, but we do have some new evidence to consider.

Few will argue about whether the latest Ferraris, such as the Roma, share any real DNA with their ancestors. Similarly Porsche’s new wide-body, short-nosed 911 is seen as a true son of the original, despite their differences. Some say that the new Ferrari four-door SUV cannot be a ‘real’ Ferrari, but can it? What of a Rolls-Royce, which is now a behemoth of a collection of foreign parts styled to evoke something? Apparently, perceived wisdom claims that it is ‘still’ a Rolls-Royce – whatever that is. In this context we might ask what is the point of the Bentley Bentayga, other than branding? We can assume Bugatti will not build an SUV 4 × 4 for the sake of it, but then again Porsche did, so who knows. But the Bugatti Veyron, Chiron, Divo, Centodieci and Mistral do give us hope that the ‘new’ Bugatti is more about engineering than about branding. And they would not be here without a car named EB110 and man named Romano Artioli.

Set in the contexts of nuance and history, the latest Bugatti cars surely have at least as much right to be called by that name as does a new Aston Martin or Maserati that bears their respective badges.

The next question is who defines what is ‘real’? All Bugattis are ‘supercars’, yet some question the perceived wisdom by which an old pre-1939 original-era Bugatti can be placed alongside today’s new Bugatti cars and their branding. But perceived wisdom is a contradiction in terms, relying as it does upon applying current perceptions and fashionable opinions to known ‘certainties’, which history has a habit of usurping.

Surely, so long as no exercise in badge engineering has taken place and no marketing con trick has been perpetuated, a supercar of a legendary brand can indeed be a supercar with authentic reference to its ancestor’s DNA.

The original Bugatti Type 57 and its ‘Atlantic’ derivative cannot be ignored as the leading example of an original supercar – anywhere. But does it follow that a Chiron or a Centodieci might be similarly blessed? It takes a bold man or woman to dismiss any Bugatti built after 1939 as being something else and not a Bugatti, but that opinion is not unknown.

This book is not designed for those purists who recoil in horror at the thought of a new Bugatti, or shrink at the thought of an original Bugatti chassis being mated to a non-matching numbered original Bugatti engine and clothed in a new toolroom-recreated bodyshell by a Bugatti expert as an exact copy of the long-lost original. Such purists are very welcome to their niche, and I understand their rationale, but furthering the Bugatti legend may require something less Old Testament in thinking.

Furthermore, there are plenty of original Bugattis with matching numbers that have been, shall we say, ‘restored’ to a condition beyond their originality, yet they are often hailed at the most exclusive concourse gatherings as being the ‘real thing’. I, for one, would dissent from such a description of plastic-primed, acrylic-painted, vinyl-lined, over-dipped chromed pastiche masquerading as the ‘better than new’ old Bugatti, for it would be a car that has had its soul and psychometry wiped clean.

Ettore Bugatti was not subject to the constraints of ‘perceived wisdom’ and its self-aggrandising and self-limiting philosophy. He did not just think beyond such constraints or fashions, he thought far beyond accepted knowledge: he innovated and had to be bold, brave and maybe a bit self-centred to achieve his escape from the conventional thinking of the moment. Some say he was a snob who pandered to his wealthy clientele, yet he did not follow fashion, he created it, timelessly.

Ettore also further developed the state of the art in engineering and design. As such he was not always the revolutionary sometimes portrayed, a disruptive figure in car design. On occasion he more accurately refined the known practices and mechanisms of the day to an extent never previously encountered. These traits have led to some confusion about his philosophy and practice: was Ettore an innovative revolutionary genius or a clever adapter and improver of the known? I suggest he was both, but the point is that no one matched him in terms of industrial design philosophy. You cannot ‘compare’ a Bugatti to anything: if you could, it was not a Bugatti. That was Ettore’s point.

Ettore himself stated: ‘Nothing is too beautiful. Nothing is too expensive.’ Therein lay the ethos of the man and his marque. It was also among the factors that led to its downfall.

If you open a pre-1939 Bugatti’s bonnet you will find hand-polished, hand-mottled, scraped and brushed aluminium applied all over the engine bay and added to a covering veneer over the engine block and head. Ettore insisted upon this level of the exquisite and the expensive for all his creations.

A book celebrating all things Bugatti and its truly super cars across all the ages of Bugatti, then and now, has long been absent. Why not challenge fixed minds and show how Bugatti, its supercars of the past and of today are so very real and so intrinsically linked to one another through their application of Ettore’s ethos. Surely only someone whose heart is blocked by antique Bugatti plaque could refuse to consider how today’s Bugattis reflect all that went before and do so in a similarly bespoke manner.

Charles Trevelyan, the much respected former Chairman of the Bugatti Owners’ Club, trustee of The Bugatti Trust and a serial old-Bugatti owner (as well as owning the world’s lowest mileage Ferrari Dino from new), reacted with an open mind when told of this book’s blend of old Bugattis with new Bugattis: ‘Why not, there’s no future in being stuck in 1939 or 1953. We have to embrace a wider, younger audience and persuade them to discover the magic of Bugatti.’

We ought perhaps to recall that, such was the relationship between Bugatti and the British, that in 1939 at the Bugatti Owners’ Club dinner in London, Jean Bugatti stood up and announced that he and his father were gifting a Type 51 racing car to the club for the use of those members who could not afford such a car.

Today’s new Bugattis represent far more than clever marketing or a brand name. They respect and evoke so much of the earlier, original Bugatti ethos. The time is right to chart both eras of Bugatti together, yet respecting their differences. Anyone who suggests that today’s Bugatti is ‘exploiting’ the brand and its heritage is wrong; such people just do not understand what is being attempted. If you stop off en route from the originals at the remarkable EB110, and the earlier attempts at reviving Bugatti, you could easily say that there were several eras of Bugatti. It would take someone whose mind is preserved in the automotive aspic of 1953 or 1939 to object to ‘their’ Bugatti of yesteryear being parked alongside a Bugatti of today, as will be found in this book.

Inside the Bolide’s new-age cockpit.

Across the years of my enthusiasm for Bugatti design I have encountered the varying tribes of Bugatti fans, club members and believers – or, as some call them, ‘Bugattistes’. Above all, however, there are the cars and the people who preserve and celebrate them and the legend of their founder.

A few Bugatti experts are adamant that today’s Bugattis should not be linked to the ‘proper’ Bugattis of yesteryear. It is a view to which they are entitled, but it is a position that limits access to awareness of Bugatti for newer generations. Of course, a new Bugatti is not an original Bugatti, but does this have to become a self-limiting philosophy?

If we can avoid corporate speak and ‘brand-pillars’ talk, is it not the truth that today’s new Bugattis do follow, in their own way, the ethos and spirit of the grand designs that went before.

Geoffrey St John, a renowned supporter of British enthusiasm for Bugattis, often said, notably at Prescott and at The Bugatti Trust, ‘Bugattis are a disease. I like their stubborn individualism. There are no comparisons.’

Remember, it was Ettore Bugatti who said that if anything could be compared with a Bugatti, it was not a Bugatti. Perhaps we should therefore not compare today’s Bugattis with yesterday’s Bugattis, and instead understand better the process now taking place.

The mission of The Bugatti Trust is not just to preserve Bugatti. It is to further the Bugatti legend by touching today’s young enthusiasts and engaging with them through a series of educational projects and schemes, not least in engineering and design establishments. The Bugatti Trust, which counted the late HRH The Duke of Edinburgh amongst its patrons, is one of the most vital educational and archival institutions I know, and I urge you to support it and its tutelage of a new generation. Such young people are not ‘stuck’ in 1939, 1953 or 1979.

Youth cannot be ignored, for they will be the future and the past – as we all become. If a youth wants to fixate upon a new Bugatti then why not, and if youth can be taught from where the new Bugattis get their DNA, then so much the better. We need young engineers and designers, and we need them to understand what happened before digital authoritarianism took over car design and car driving. Where better to start and continue than at Bugatti amid its design greatness.

Remember this, in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s youngsters had posters on their bedroom walls depicting the Porsche 911 Turbo, random Ferraris (if such a thing exists), the Maserati Bora or Merak, or the Lamborghini Countach – or latterly the Diablo. Today’s youngsters have posters, home screens and screen savers depicting the latest Bugattis – the Veyron, Chiron, Centodieci, Devio and Mistral. Why would anyone ignore or deny such enthusiasm?

The late Barrie Price, one of the founder members of The Bugatti Trust, former Bugatti Owners’ Club leader and owner of several Bugattis (including the Type 57 registration AUK 717), first caught the Bugatti disease when he paid £3,000 for a Type 57SC Atlantic, which he sold a decade later for £85,000. Hindsight being a wonderful thing, this car, now in the Ralph Lauren Collection, has more recently reached the stratospheric heights of a six- or seven-figure value. Price also owned the very rare Type 68 chassis and built a Type 59 ‘continuation’ out of original Bugatti parts and new parts that he made. He even designed and built a totally convincing time-warp body for an original Bugatti Type 57 saloon that had lost its original body. Barrie, the man who saved the Lea Francis legacy, always insisted that youth must be recruited into recognition of Bugatti and its story.

Shortly before his death, Barrie kindly encouraged the author, stating: ‘I support anything that promotes learning about Bugatti in whatever context, ancient or modern. Ettore was unique and hugely important. Do not be put off from re-telling his story in your own way.’

Across the 30 years of its existence the original Bugatti concern manufactured something over 7,000 cars and nearly 2,000 remain – plus or minus the ‘missing’ ones.

We also must celebrate the stunning and vitally sculptural work of the Type 35 owner/restorer and renowned car designer Achim Anscheidt, whose chief-of-design effect upon the current Bugattis and the forthcoming Bugatti Rimac cars cannot be underestimated. Along with designer Frank Heyl’s input, today’s Bugattis could have had no better design curator than Anscheidt. The contribution of the other Bugatti designers who will be named here has also been vital.

Die-hard old-school Bugattistes who are not sure about Bugatti today should look no further than what has been done with more recent Bugattis, from which they may understand Anscheidt’s view that inspiration from the past is not the only consideration. What you understand it to be and then how you turn the past into the future is the key to realising the design projects.

Classic Bugattis line up at Ettore’s bend at Prescott, home of the Bugatti Owners’ Club.

Let’s celebrate Bugatti, always recalling that the current Bugatti movement is something both very special and rare in the world of classic cars and also a more modern enthusiasm. The marque may be thought of as exotic and very special, yet its appeal appears to be surprisingly within reach, both to schoolboys and to older men and women across many social and cultural divides.

All Bugattis, whether from the 1920s and 1930s or the more recent cars, are different yet possess an equally defining ethos. Bugatti enthusiasts share a bond created by the polymath genius of Ettore and his son Jean Bugatti. Their designs have been a lasting inspiration over one hundred years, unique cars that capture the soul through their exquisite engineering and what some might call, perhaps with arguable hyperbole, ‘divine design’.

If ever the currently somewhat oversubscribed term ‘design language’ was appropriate then it was and is for Bugatti ancient and modern. They may demonstrate different design languages, of course, but they all display pure design.

Despite this, the Bugatti world is not an exclusive club limited to the super-rich. Bugatti is far more open to enthusiasts than some might imagine. The British home to Bugatti at Prescott Hill Climb is an open house to enthusiasts from all over the world. Americans, Antipodeans, Europeans, all have their Bugatti clubs, publications and lovely gatherings; the Bugatti scene is diverse and multicultural, despite some thinking of it as ‘posh’.

This book is a conversation about Bugatti and its supercars, drawing on sources that are both ‘establishment’ and yet also ‘radical’ or new. You do not have to love the 2022 Chiron Super Sport or the truly amazing Centodieci as much as a 1930s Type 35, nor vice versa, but the point is that the new Bugatti owes its existence in design terms to the earlier Bugatti. It follows that today’s Bugattis keep the legend going in the modern context – and are far beyond any accusation of trading on a name and its legend. The brand has not usurped the car: the new Bugattis are far deeper than that, their unique design language and engineering philosophy being as vital as it was in yesterday’s cars.

Of course, even this book’s title is contentious for, as stated earlier, are not all Bugattis ‘supercars’? In the present era of polarised debate, when opinion is posted as fact and nuance has been erased, but with social media and the mainstream media often supine before fashion and celebrity, old Bugattis are often believed to be anachronisms and new Bugattis are seen as celebrity footballers’ ego trips and eco-enemy gas-guzzlers. But if you look beyond such labels, in Bugatti lies the true art of the automobile and of driving.

This text is intended to reframe the debate rather than define it, since ‘definitive’ is a hostage to opinion, let alone fortune, in a world of experts more knowledgeable than many of us aspirant hopefuls.

All I can tell you is that the sheer point-and-squirt delight of driving the little Brescia made me realise it was and remains a ‘super’ car, something far more than the sum of its century-old ‘vintage’ parts or its humble and petite form may engender in your expectations. The Brescia steered with feel and delight, turned-in with barely credible accuracy, and seemed to defy its engine capacity with torque and pace. The smile and the memory lasted days after driving the Brescia. Just don’t mention the brakes.

The Type 35 Supercharged was something else, yet still had the feel of a thoroughbred racehorse or a fighter aircraft. You could power, shoot and scythe along the road and through bends with such accuracy and delight. The car almost seemed to know what the driver was thinking; the soundtrack was dizzying, the steering telepathic.

Rare beast: Jean-Pierre Wimille’s Type 59/50B seen on the starting line on its historic return to Prescott after eight decades of absence.

A Chiron prepares to launch from the Prescott starting line.

The ride in a ‘spaceship’ Chiron was a bit more encapsulated, but no less exciting. The wall of torque, the lack of scrabbling or fight from the drivetrain, the intergalactic feel, it was all stunning and really was in every sense ‘immense’ or even ‘epic’!

What of the 1930s incarnation of the Bugatti, the Type 57, its ‘Atalante’ model, and then the ‘Atlantic’ – are these not true supercars?

The Type 55 Super Sport Roadster or the very rare Type 55FHC (Fixed Head Coupé) are surely pure genius. What of the ex-Geoffrey St John Type 55 roadster with its Figoni & Falaschi couture bodywork? How could anyone in their right mind argue against it?

The heights of Bugatti philosophy include the Type 59/50B 4.7-litre monoposto single-seater, represented by Jean-Pierre Wimille’s car, which returned to Prescott in 2019 for the first time since its original appearance eight decades earlier (seeChapter 7). Also in these pages you will see Jim Hull’s Type 59S Competition ‘Elektron’ car as rebuilt, not as a ‘copy’, but as a toolroom tribute containing much original Bugatti content on its original chassis, yet with an accurate new body to replace the one apparently destroyed by the Bugattis in the late 1930s.

How fortunate I was to have been invited to sample and photograph these rare cars on the occasion of their very rare visits to the home of the Bugatti Owners’ Club and to The Bugatti Trust, respectively, both organisations of which had a hand in honouring these cars and many others seen in this book.

Leaping forward into a new century, the thoughtful EB110 reeks of Bugatti purism, truly capturing the very essence of Bugatti and showing what reinvention can mean. It was more than a branding exercise to make money, as we can now see more clearly.

The Veyron defines an era of the modern supercar, although in my opinion the Chiron tops it because it has the added ingredient of style, as opposed to the Veyron’s sledgehammer approach to being a bolide. Then we have the Chiron Sport, the 2022 Devio, the Chiron Super Sport 300, the Centodieci, the Divo, La Voiture Noire, the Bolide and the Mistral.

Wouldn’t most people want one of the ten examples of the Centodieci built as the EB110 reincarnate, with its true hypercar underpinnings?

Does the superb Centodieci really ‘bring together all of the components of the Bugatti brand into one extraordinary package’, in the words of Christophe Pichon, the President of today’s Bugatti, or is that just marketing hyperbole? Not really, for the car is truly a Bugatti, an amazing exercise in engineering, industrial design, art and driving.

As for the Bugatti Bolide concept car, was it a step too far or an ethos encapsulated? The verdict is yours not mine. Elliptical elegance, compound curves, wonderful castings, hollow axles, lowered surbaisse chassis, streamlined sculptures, milled dashboards, wonderful wheels, straight-8s and superchargers, advanced metallurgy – never mind mascots, badges and so much more – Bugatti just keeps on giving (and that is just the cars).

Everyone should judge for themselves as to what is a Bugatti supercar. I can only say that I think the Type 57 Atlantic, the gouette d’eau or teardrop Bugatti, is the true definition of what makes a supercar and more, designed at a time before modernism and then digital authoritarianism took over the minds of designers, engineers and drivers alike.

This amazing story would never have got off the ground without ‘Le Patron’ – originally Ettore Bugatti and then his son Jean – nor a cast of supporters, drivers and Bugatti believers, nor would it be sustained today without the owners, the Bugatti Owners’ Club, Bugantics, the web-based Bugatti Pages, the wonderful Bugatti Revue and, of course, the utterly essential Bugatti Trust, which itself is a resource of Bugatti brilliance beyond compare. The Petersen Automotive Museum and the Mullin Automotive Museum, both in California, the American Bugatti Club’s Pur Sang magazine and the Bugatti movement generally must be cited for their true dedication to all things Bugatti, both auto and aero, in the classic iteration.

This Type 40, with the rare ‘Spanish’ emblem on the grille and the unusual body, was originally supplied to Madrid and today is raced regularly by Adam Ward.

Some think that Bugatti was all about glitter and expensive engineering. Admittedly the engineering was expensive, but the truth is that Ettore Bugatti reused, recycled and repurposed many parts, chassis, engines, panels and Bugatti bits to build new cars out of nearly new, or previously loved Bugatti cars. Ettore scrapped very little and refurbished much. Your ‘new’ 1930s Bugatti might have been a car with a history – or at least had its chassis or body prestressed by some prior experience the year before or so.

Behind Ettore’s artistic mind and the vast panoply of his designs, creations and devices – his constructions – there lay a hoarder and, perhaps we can even say with a touch of sacrilege, a bit of a tinkerer in metal and wood. He could turn materials into art, a skill he shared with his brother Rembrandt Bugatti. Ettore’s son Jean was similarly blessed. In Ettore and Jean may be seen the rare amalgamation of an artistic brain with an engineering brain, two differing aspects of thinking that rarely join in harmony in the motor industry, but they did in the Bugattis and their output.

Who knows what genealogical diversion created such minds and the synapses to fire all the right notes in the correct order. What a repertoire, what a psychology.

What of Bugatti ‘replicas’ or ‘copies’? Well, it depends on the replica or the copy. The Bugatti replica movement comes in various guises. The expensive modern Pur Sang-branded Bugattis might better be called a ‘recreation’ and are about as close as you can get to the original idea and ethos. They stem from Argentina and a more recent Californian popularity and should not be ignored, provided we realise that they are what they are, however lovely. Pur Sang also make replacement Bugatti parts that modern owners of ‘real’ old Bugattis should not ignore if an original is not to be found.

It should be remembered, however, that ‘Pur Sang’ stems from the etymology of an equine term used by Ettore Bugatti for his early pure or thoroughbred cars. In the early 1960s Hugh Conway Snr wrote a book entitled Bugatti: ‘Le pur-sang des automobiles’, the title of which refers to Ettore’s thoroughbred bloodline original manifestations of his design philosophy.

The Miller-influenced twin-cam-engined Type 51 with Bugatti restorer Tim Dutton (Ivan Dutton Ltd) at the wheel at Ettore’s bend, Prescott.

As the Types 30 evolved into the Types 40, a grand touring design was introduced. This blue beauty defines that process.

The Centodieci, today’s ‘ultimate’ Bugatti, might be different but it captures the spirit and ethos of Bugatti.

Design delight. Jean Bugatti’s Type 57 Ventoux body design has more road presence than a Rolls-Royce.

A Bugatti Owners’ Club-sanctioned ‘new build’ old Type 35 built from real Bugatti bits is hardly to be sniffed at. Neither is an exquisite Tula toolroom Bugatti built using many original bits or chassis parts. Jarrot Engines, Ivan Dutton, Gentry Restorations, William I’Anson Ltd, Tula Precision Ltd, Ashton Keynes Vintage Restorations, Crosthwaite & Gardiner, and Bugatelier are just some of the restorers, builders and purveyors of Bugattis and their parts who should be saluted.

I do not criticise the ‘toolroom’ type Bugatti ‘copies’ equipped with original Bugatti-built parts that meet the established rules. There are plenty of ‘original’ Bugattis out there that have been re-bodied with accurate, replacement toolroom copy bodies, and there are many truly original Bugatti parts fitted into cars that are at least three-fifths original parts and are therefore sanctioned as being de facto Bugattis. Can one really object to the Rod Jolley-built Type 57 Atlantic re-bodied open ‘Spider’? I suppose some can, but it remains a stunning body on a true 1934 Bugatti Type 57 chassis that once wore a Galibier body.

What of the Madame Itier Bugatti, which was originally re-bodied in the 1930s as so many ‘original’ Bugattis were by their owners, using ‘official’ coachbuilders (carrossiers, carrozzerie or Karosserie)? The Itier car is still a real Bugatti even if it has a history.

Sadly, the original Bugatti car company’s production was brought to a halt by the events of the late 1930s until a new era, a new reincarnation and new owners of the Bugatti brand. Bugatti Automobili under Roman Artioli did an amazing job in 1992 with the EB110 series. Volkswagen AG, through its subsidiary Porsche, was the next custodian of the marque. Now with Bugatti Rimac, a collaboration between Porsche and the world-leading Croatian engineering and electric powerplant company Rimac Automobili, it has surely reached a new era.

But are we still left with two Bugatti camps – old and new? It takes courage to identify with both, let alone put them in the same book. Each to their own. Here is an attempt to analyse, explain and engage the forces and themes of Bugatti in a way that brings together something old, something new. The Bugatti story is involving and very special. I hope that this will help to join up the dots. We must now either engage a magneto before leaning out of the open cockpit and selecting an external lever, or press a button on a digitalised dashboard and choose warp drive. The choice is yours, but all the cars were and are Bugattis – pure and not so simple.

Lance ColeVia Prescott, Rose Bay, Katoomba, Arcturus,Malestroit, Downderry and Walbury Hill

The stunning 1930s Profilée Jean Bugatti design seen alongside the newer Chiron of the same Profilée incarnation.

BUGATTI TIMELINE

1856 Birth of Carlo Bugatti, who becomes internationally famous as a designer and artist: Carlo exhibits at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

1881 Carlo’s son Ettore Bugatti born in Milan.

1899 Ettore serves as an unpaid apprentice at Prinetti & Stucchi, Milan, and builds his first speculative vehicle/car designs and a ‘Type 1’.

1901 Working with the Gulinelli brothers, Ettore creates his Type 2 prototype. The design is licensed to De Dietrich: fewer than 100 produced.

1909 After working with Mathis, De Dietrich and Deutz, Ettore builds Type 10: moves to Molsheim.

1912 Peugeot purchase a licence of a Bugatti design for their new small car, the Bébé. Bugatti himself produces a total of 445 8-valve engined Bugatti cars up to 1914 and the start of World War I. The Type 10 and then the Type 13 become his hallmarks.

1920 Bugatti manufactures the Type 13 and 16-valve cars, achieving an output of more than 2,000 cars.

1922 A version of the Type 12 is named the Brescia after it wins there. Bugatti also competes at Indianapolis. The Type 29 and Type 30 series are followed by the Type 40. Type 32 Tank Mk1 model experiments in the 1920s.

1924 Launch of the Type 35: more than 600 Type 35s and Type 37s built. Cars of these types successful in 2,000 races/ competitions.

1926 Type 41 Royale prototype followed by six derivatives with varying body designs.

1927 Type 44 launched and over 1,000 built up to 1930. Grand Touring Types 46, 49 and 50 produced. Racing models, including Type 51, prove successful as new decade dawns.

1930 80 Bugatti railway power cars/sets produced for the Chemins de fer de l’Etat using variations of the 12.7-litre Bugatti engine. A Type 50 wins Le Mans.

1934–9 Development of the Type 57 including the Type 57 Atalante, Aérolithe, Atlantic and Type 57G Tank.

1939 Jean-Pierre Wimille has success with the Type 59/50B racer. Jean Bugatti is killed in testing accident.

1947 Ettore Bugatti dies. Company enters various stages of legal status and disputes. Attempts are made to reincarnate the brand with new car ideas, but Type 61 and Type 73 do not achieve series production. A planned new factory in Paris is not built.

1952 Bugatti’s last motor show stand at the Paris Salon. Bugatti gains ongoing military industrial contracts for non-car production. Roland Bugatti attempts revival.

1956 Type 251 racing car project, limited to two prototypes, is terminated. The Type 252 sports car concept is stillborn.

1963 A curious change is made to the design of the Bugatti marque badge just before Hispano-Suiza (aviation) takes over the remains of the Bugatti engineering company. The Schlumpf brothers buy up Bugatti cars in large numbers for their unique collection.

1978– The Molsheim factory operated by Hispano-Suiza loses its final identity as the last Bugatti badges are removed following the SNECMA company takeover the previous year. All Ettore’s children are dead. The Bugatti car brand is long gone, but the company name survives within the Messier-Hispano-Bugatti brand, specialising in aircraft landing gear, now Safran Landing Systems.

1987 Bugatti International founded in Luxembourg by Jean-Marc Borel. A new company, Bugatti Automobili SpA, is registered. The new Bugatti EB110 is announced and developed into a production supercar at a new factory at Campogalliano, which opens in 1990. A revised EB110S design is announced in 1991.

1994 A single EB110 competes at Le Mans.

1995 Bugatti Automobili SpA declared insolvent.

1997 Small-scale production by Dauer Racing of Germany of a handful of revised EB110s as owner of the EB110 licence.

1998 Bugatti brand acquired by Volkswagen. Bugatti S.A.S. formed. A one-off Bugatti EB118 concept car designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro for motor show audiences.

1999The relaunched Bugatti brand shows off its EB 18/4 concept car at motor shows worldwide.

2000 Concept car derivative announced as the Veyron 16.4 design study: a 16-cylinder, 8-litre mid-engined car named after Pierre Veyron, the pre-war Bugatti racer.

2005 Bugatti Veyron launched. The last Veyron, a Grand Sport Vitesse La Finale, was sold in 2015.

2016 Bugatti Chiron launched 16 March at Geneva Motor Show. Numerous Chiron model variations up to 2023 include the Supersport, Pur Sport, ‘110 ans Bugatti’, Edition Noire, Les Légendes du Ciel and L’Ébé.

2021 Bugatti under revised ownership via Porsche, with Croatian engineering and electric powerplant company Rimac as majority shareholder.

2021–3 New Centodieci, Divo, La Voiture Noire and Bolide models.

2024 Limited edition of 99 Bugatti W16 Mistral Roadsters sells out for 2024 delivery. This is the last Bugatti model to use the 8-litre quad-turbo W16 engine, as first used in the Veyron.

Bugatti’s exquisite design was applied to everything: note the earlier style of EB logo on this steering wheel boss.

CHAPTER 1

ETTORE: POLYMATH CREATIVE

It was Ettore’s fault, for he began the great design and engineering odyssey that led to Bugatti as we know it. Trains, planes and automobiles were at the core of it, but there was so much more.

Some observers think that Ettore was a revolutionary engineer who created and built entirely innovative, previously unseen new devices and vehicles. Yet that is not entirely accurate. Yes, Ettore did invent, patent and produce advanced and special new ideas, but not all of them were innovations beyond previous practices. In some contexts Ettore’s works were the state of the art, further refined yet still based in earlier and known ideas, concepts that he took one or more steps further in an evolutionary process that was not necessarily revolutionary every time he put pencil to paper.

But we should not underestimate Ettore’s futurism and innovative and disruptive thinking as a creator of new ideas and themes. He was clearly a strong character and some have suggested he was dictatorial yet also benevolent in that command. For certain, however, you could not pursue, patent and produce such creations if you were hiding under the proverbial bushel. Ettore was the boss, and had to be.

We should recall that at the birth of the century of the motor car, great engineers were all seeking answers to the same question. Ettore Bugatti, though, may have brought more to the history of car design than anyone of his era, arguably even more than Porsche, Lancia and other illustrious names of the 1920s and 1930s.

Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti (1881–1947) designed and invented an array of ‘things’, starting with cars, before trains and aircraft grabbed Ettore’s attention and his moneymaking requirements. The arts of engineering and design, however, lay at the heart of Ettore’s philosophy, life and output. Furniture, consumer products, engines, boats, aircraft, machine tools, aerodynamic and hydrodynamic devices, equine mechanisms, all this and more poured from Ettore’s amazing brain.

From planes, trains and automobiles to boats, hulls, a pasta machine, engines, brake systems, a razor-blade sharpener, machine tools, wings, steam condensers, vices, floor polishers, fishing reels, caravans and cameras, and more, Ettore never stopped thinking. He even invented a medical device for surgeons to use during major internal operations. In 1914 Bugatti designed a multi-valve engine and an early rapid-firing semi-automatic weapon, but it was not taken up. Instead he concentrated on his engine designs in an attempt to help the French war effort and was based in the industrial Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret, surrounded by French car and aircraft manufacturers.

Such a device was far removed from designs for a Bugatti bicycle, a pasta-maker or a beautiful and hydrodynamically advanced twin-masted yacht with its own patented mainsailreef-roller system. Bugatti was a true polymath. He dreamed up special propellers, a new marine prop-shaft bearing and, notably, a patented high-speed motor torpedo boat with an innovative stepped and channelled hull, all drawn up by Bugatti in his marine moments, which also resulted in the high-speed ‘Ninette’ type hydroplane speedboats, again with radical hulls and engines.After 1945 Ettore designed a motor torpedo gunboat powered by eight supercharged 50B engines set within a hull made of the new alloy Duralinox: only one prototype was built.1

A BUGATTI-ISM?

Best known for his cars, and to a lesser extent his railcars, the truth can be seen that Ettore was a multi-disciplinary designer, inventor and creative whose ideas touched far more than cars. It tends to be the most dedicated Bugatti fanatics who know about his life and work beyond the automotive world. Ettore brought his touch to a vast array of subjects and products from cars to trains, to boats, aircraft and a vast catalogue raisonné of machines, devices and useful products.

He effectively created a collection of design themes, motifs, techniques, textures and applications as an artistic and industrial design movement that was without doubt an ‘ism’ – a ‘Bugatti-ism’. It was not just Ettore. His father Carlo had been a furniture and jewellery designer who created a unique style and design language that reflected several oriental cultures amid its own motifs. It was Carlo who established the Bugatti family links with Paris, studying there in the late 1870s and moving there in 1904.

Carlo’s second son Rembrandt Bugatti might have become one of the greatest artists and sculptors of his age, but he died too young. Ettore’s own son Jean became a significant designer before his own untimely death. The gene pool and its output were truly amazing in the true sense of that overused word.

This Bugatti design output was set amid the better-known names and movements of 1920s and 1930s European art and engineering. I wish to suggest that Bugatti-ism was of far more significance than ‘just’ his car design, and that Ettore and Jean’s output should be framed as going beyond their cars. The Bugattis, grandfather, father and son, defined a major early to mid-twentieth century movement beyond the cars for which the name has become famous.

The concept of the artisan as artist-engineer or artistinventor was long an accepted norm, notably in Italy and perhaps through the inspiration of Leonardo da Vinci. By the 1940s, however, engineering and design – we dare not call it styling – had been separated, creating two camps that were often in conflict. This was never more obvious than in aviation and automotive spheres after 1945. It has taken years for these two groups to begin to work together again. Ettore, however, like his father Carlo, was an artisan artistengineer-designer and Bugatti cars have always combined art and engineering in what today we term industrial design, a field that also includes that dreaded word ‘styling’.

There is nothing wrong with style or styling, it is just that a manufactured false perception of the term, its meaning and context, was created in the recent past.

Ettore Bugatti created, designed, invented and built many amazing things in a tradition that had very specific roots in northern Italy and central Europe in an age of science and romanticism that introduced great advances across several centuries by inventors, designers, composers, architects and painters. In music we might cite Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Bowie or Jarrett. In art and architecture there is Picasso, Kandinsky, Le Corbusier, Lloyd Wright and Utzon. In engineering we might single out Lanchester, Porsche, Citroën, Voisin or Lippisch. The name Bugatti is just as important and vital as these names in terms of artistic and engineering disruption of thought.

Ettore Bugatti seen in the cab of his railcar design, which placed the driver in a fairing on the roof, an idea that was repeated decades later in railway stock design.

The family Bugatti was thrown into this heady mix of social science and history, especially through Ettore’s forensic approach and obsession with detail and quality. The Bugattis’ move from Italy to France had an interesting precedent in Leonardo da Vinci’s own arrival by 1517 at the court of King François I, bringing his drawings and plans of vehicles, aerial craft, inventions and paintings. At the Château d’Amboise he was appointed ‘premier peinture, architecte et mécanicien du roi’.

The French clearly knew a design genius when they saw one and Ettore was to be embraced by French design and the French government in the twentieth century. In Paris he was surrounded by like-minded men, many of whom were part of the French intellectual establishment and its principal mechanism of effect, the École Nationale Supérieure de l’Aéronautique et de Constructions Mécaniques, known simply as the ‘Sup’Aéro’.

Aircraft and railway stock (trains, locomotives and power cars or sets, to use the correct terms) were his passions besides cars; he liked all things equine too. In the 1930s Ettore was focused on railways in Paris, while his son Jean came to shape the Bugatti Company’s automotive function at Molsheim. Much greatness would stem from their efforts.

AERO-ENGINES

It was around 1914–15 that the prototypes of Bugatti’s aero-engines emerged. That they were not a commercial success and rarely flew in series-production aircraft should not qualify them as failures in engineering terms, since geopolitical circumstances, notably the outbreak of war, intervened.

Spurred on by his friend, the pioneer aviator Roland Garros, Ettore began thinking about aircraft design in 1913. His process would result in a 5.0-litre engine for Garros’s own Bugatti, which was a stepping stone to a derivative 12-litre straight-8 aero-engine design of 1915. Licences for this engine were sold by Bugatti to Diatto of Italy, Delaunay-Belleville of France and to America. Whether or not Daimler-Benz or BMW ever got their eyes on it remains a moot point.

Ettore’s thoughts in 1914–17 on aero-engines that might be used by aircraft held much potential. His first 500hp aero-engine, the U16 built in 1917, was a development of his earlier straight-8 250hp aero-engine and its 1915 design origins.

Bugatti’s aero-engines were mechanically efficient and notably lighter than competitors’ engines, even those made by Rolls-Royce. But were the advanced Bugatti aero-engines too clever for their own good? They have been treated harshly by some historians, but that is a perceived wisdom only.

Bugatti’s first aircraft engine designs (straight-8 and -16) were to be developed and soon licensed by Breguet. He went on to create further engine designs. Principal among these, with Jean’s input, was the Type 34 aero-engine. A new design dating from 1923 comprised two monobloc engines conjoined to deliver a monstrous 31.4-litre rating and designated the Type 67. It did not enter series production, yet it became the basis of a Bugatti car engine and also featured in the Bugatti railcar designs.

In the 1930s Bugatti would attempt to create an engine and airframe targeted at the world air speed records. This included the intended modification of his 4.7-litre car engine, designated Type 50B, into a suitable aircraft powerplant.

First built for 1917, the Bugatti U-16 Type engine was a 24.3-litre giant, with a double bank, twin 8-cylinder water-cooled arrangement that produced 410hp (306kW). It was not a Vor Vee configuration but instead an innovative U-shaped design in which both banks of cylinders projected out of the top of the engine block, instead of being at an angle of 60 or 90 degrees, for example. The U-void would have made it possible to fit a Vickers gun to provide forward fire for the intended fighter aircraft application. With its multi-valve cylinders and a dry-sump oiling system, the engine really displayed advanced thinking. The engine was also bigger than the W16 configuration seen in the more recent, 21st-century Veyron and the Chiron.

This became one of the first licence-built Bugatti engines manufactured beyond France. After a US government fact-finding tour to France, Bugatti engineer and representative Ernest Friderich travelled to New York with the new big U-16 engine (of three-valve head design). After consultations with Charles B. King of the Duesenberg Company, Duesenberg agreed to build a licensed Bugatti U-16 engine. The company also made material changes and upgrades to the engine notably in terms of the ignition equipment, valves, water pump and propeller reduction gear. These changes were admittedly introduced by King and Duesenberg, but it is probable that Ettore Bugatti would have evolved the engine and its design technicalities if he had pursued further testing and development.

The modified U-16 engine became known as the King-Bugatti. As the USA had entered the war in 1917, it was anticipated that up to 10,000 revised King-Bugatti engines would be made for fitting in aircraft. In reality, fatigue problems in the metal of the Bugatti-specification cast-iron cylinder walls required further development and caused delay. By the end of the war in November 1918 only about 40 such engines had been constructed.

The basis of the Bugatti U-16 in France would emerge via the Société Anonyme des Ateliers d’Aviation Louis Breguet (the Breguet Company) with which Bugatti had forged links and sold production licences to. By mid-1921 Ettore had moved on, leaving Breguet as his licensee to get on with it. Sadly, Breguet’s Bugatti-powered aircraft production was limited, although aircraft of this type were constructed, advertised and flown in the 1920s. The French company Morane-Saulnier also fitted a U-16 to its first prototype of the AN two-seat fighter in 1918.

After an initial Breguet-Bugatti straight-8 engine concept, by 1919 Breguet had exhibited its own version of the U-16 engine and announced plans to use it in Breguet’s larger post-war airframes. Like Duesenberg, Breguet also had to work around cylinder-wall metal fatigue issues, reducing the bore and revising the cylinders. This became the revised Bugatti-Breguet engine and led to the Breguet U-16 Type U.24, which produced a reputed 600hp at a low 2,800rpm. Breguet even joined two of the U.24 engines in-line (but each being de-clutchable from the other in the event of an engine problem) to create the Breguet Quadrimoteur Type A of 1,000hp, making it the world’s most powerful engine. This was succeeded by the Quadrimoteur Type B with four banks of eight-cylinders respectively, giving 2860cc and 1,015bhp amid a massive torque rating.

Breguet developed its B.19 bomber into the B.20 single-engined, 20-seat airliner, aptly named the Léviathan, which was powered by two Bugatti engines conjoined into one T32 Quadrimoteur Type A engine and driving a single four-bladed propeller in the nose of the airliner. The engine(s) were mounted in tandem in a cast cradle, driving a single shaft to the propeller from the two conjoined engines via an output shaft via the gearbox that combined the two engines. The airframe first flew in June 1922. Then Breguet decided to remove the nose-mounted engines and create the B.22, which had a pair of Breguet-Bugatti U-16s mounted upon each inner wing. This freed up the nose for a larger passenger cabin and saw the creation of a large wing-mounted twin-engined airliner for late 1922. The airframe was developed into 1923 but was not a success and was destroyed during a forced landing and subsequent fire during a 1923 air race.2

100P

Ettore went on in 1938–9 to create an entire Bugatti aircraft. The ultra-streamlined Bugatti 100 monocoque aircraft featured a wing design that incorporated elliptical thinking, forward wing sweep, an advanced patented ‘reverse-flow’ cooling system with drag reduction, automatic undercarriage and even a semi-automatic flap/spoiler control system, fitted with speed and power configuration sensors that predated today’s mechanisms. In its final 100P version the airframe had a small, low-drag tail empennage and tail plane that met with some unjustified criticism, as flight testing eventually proved (just like the Supermarine Spitfire’s small fin and tailplane).

Built in wood, this began as a Bugatti design sketch created and drawn by Ettore. Louis de Monge (Vicomte Pierre Louis de Monge de Franeau), who had embraced advanced design and improved aerodynamic concepts in the mid-1930s, further developed the idea and brought it to the production design stage. Bugatti’s original sketch is not greatly dissimilar to the final 100P design. We can say that de Monge ‘designed’ the machine, not least using his knowledge of aerodynamics, but Ettore’s sketches were so close to the final result that we must cite Ettore in his own airframe’s creation. It was Ettore who originally dreamed up the prototype airframe design (Type 66) with two almost in-line engines and the transmission and gearbox system configured in front of the forward one. Such ideas would seep into the final Bugatti 100P airframe.

The Bugatti 100P aircraft monoplane design featured advanced aerodynamics in an ellipsoid wing with twinaxis planform and a reverse-flow cooling air supply.

Designed as an air racer for the 1938 season and powered by the Bugatti Type 50B-derived car engine, in a twin-engined configuration the aircraft could easily have been a fighter airframe that turned tightly and scythed through the sky. In fact Ettore called it a fighter aircraft (avion de chasse) in his early sketches and envisaged a military version from the air racer origins.

Louis de Monge had built an early experimental example of an all-wing airframe in 1924 and powered it with two wing-mounted Bugatti Brescia engines, the propellor drives of which were oppositely ‘handed’ to counteract the normal torque-direction effect. The first flight was in 1925 and de Monge became a Bugatti enthusiast.

Bugatti’s amazing aircraft was then updated with more power from a lighter engine built using magnesium. In fact it soon had two engines to boost performance and further design refinements. It was this machine that was defined as a prototype. The Bugatti aircraft design featured a through-fuselage drive or ‘prop’ shaft that passed under the pilot to the nose, in a similar configuration to that used in the American wartime Bell P-39 Airacobra. The North American P-51 Mustang used a clever low drag-thrust component exhaust cooling system, but it might be going a bit far to suggest it was taken from or inspired by the Bugatti system: in England during the late 1930s, both Spitfire aerodynamicist Beverley Shenstone, the Royal Aircraft Establishment’s F.W. Meredith and the Bristol Aircraft Company’s young engineer Malcolm Sayer, who would later design Jaguar car bodies, notably the E-Type, were working on reverse or advanced-flow/engine airframe cooling system designs.

The Bugatti aircraft, despite being wooden, was ‘super’ in every respect because it reduced both main types of drag: lift-induced and form- or shape-induced parasitic drag. We might see it in a singular aviation context as a monocoque, twin-axis, ellipsoid-winged Supermarine Spitfire crossed with a wooden de Havilland Mosquito, with a touch of the Dewoitine D.520 added, but created through the vision of Bugatti and de Monge, and incorporating various French, Italian and German design ideas.

A plan to fit the ‘on-paper’ Bugatti engine Type 67 21.7-litre V16 aero-engine of early 1939 provenance to the 100P’s airframe was mooted but would have required increases to the span, length, fin and rudder height/area, and many expensive structural modifications.

Despite all its advances and patents and stunning form and function, the original Bugatti aircraft never flew – the German advance into Paris in mid-1940 put paid to that. A replica version made three brief flights in 2015–16, but on the third it dived into a field, killing the pilot.

TRAINS