Bug’s Life: Ettore Bugatti's Motoring Legacy
Ettore Bugatti liked to say that, ‘Nothing is too beautiful, nothing is too expensive’. Which probably explains why his famous creations — the racing cars that established his legend in the 20th century — were pure hedonism on wheels.
In 1927, a most singular automobile glided out of the doors of a factory in Molsheim, in present-day Alsace. The Bugatti Royale was the ultimate in luxury conveyances, as envisioned by the celebrated Italian engineer and designer Ettore Bugatti. Reportedly inspired when Ettore was goaded by the remarks of an Englishwoman, who compared Bugattis unfavourably to Rolls-Royces, the Royale cut a suitably imposing figure. It was 21 feet long and weighed around three tons (outshining a Rolls by 20 per cent and 25 per cent respectively). Its rangy bonnet concealed a 12.7-litre straight-eight engine, originally designed for the French Air ministry, which could theoretically propel it to 180 kilometres an hour or more. It featured a swooping Art Deco running board and a radiator cap modelled on a dancing elephant sculpture by Rembrandt Bugatti, Ettore’s brother. It was a car fit for kings, which was just as well,
since, in a mark of the hubristic élan that was Ettore’s trademark, he decreed that only bona fide crowned heads need apply for one of the planned edition of 25.
Sadly, the Royale — and, more piquantly, its basic chassis price of $30,000 — was an indulgence too far for a regal caste that was grappling with the onset of the Great Depression, and, later, the regional flare-ups that would eventually ignite world war II. King Alfonso of Spain was deposed before he could take delivery; King Carol II of Romania fared likewise; and Ettore flatly refused to sell to King Zog of Albania, claiming that “the man’s table manners are beyond belief”. The seven Royales that were eventually made ended up in the hands of French couturiers, English custard tycoons, and Swedish textile magnates; one of the six still in existence went for £5.5m at Christie’s in 1987, making it, fittingly, the most expensive car ever sold at auction.
If Ettore was looking down, he doubtless allowed himself a smile of self-validation. A lover of all things equine, he liked to refer to his creations as pur sang, or thoroughbreds, and from the outset, whatever he was designing — he’s thought to have produced more than a thousand patents in his lifetime, for aircraft design, steam locomotives, ship’s hulls, bicycles, Venetian blinds, fishing reels, and surgical instruments — he approached the task with a formal rigour and an artist’s imaginative flight, which found its most powerful expression in the racing cars that established the Bugatti legend in the first half of the 20th century — a legend that continues to inspire reverence in petrolheads and aesthetes alike. What other company could unite Picasso and Jeremy Clarkson in fan-boy encomiums? The former described Bugatti’s famous square-cut aluminium engine as “the most beautiful man-made object”, and the latter, test-driving the Bugatti Chiron (top speed: 420 kilometres an hour), opined that “it feels as though you’re coming up through the spout of Vesuvius, propelled by lava, convection and pressure”.
Ettore flatly refused to sell to King Zog of Albania, claiming that “the man’s table manners are beyond belief”.
While Ettore would have appreciated Clarkson’s tribute, he doubtless cherished Picasso’s praise. His family had deep artistic roots in the city of Milan; his grandfather Giovanni had been a famous architect and sculptor, while his father, Carlo, was an internationally renowned furniture and jewellery designer (his creations included a fantastical ‘throne chair’ that mashed together Japanese and Islamic influences; it can be seen supporting Michael Fassbender’s android rear in the opening scenes of Alien: Covenant), and his sculptor brother Rembrandt produced Reclining Egyptian Wolves and Yawning Lionesses alongside his dancing elephants.
Ettore (born Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti in 1881) never had a formal engineering education, instead studying sculpture at the Fine Art Academy in Brea, which enabled him to give his expansive vision free rein; look at any photo of ‘Le Patron’, as he came to be known, and above the roll-your-sleeves-up outfits — he favoured tweed boilersuits — you’re struck by his high, patrician forehead and his hooded eyes. “Nothing is too beautiful, nothing is too expensive,” he liked to say, and he outdid his near-contemporary Enzo Ferrari in producing vehicles that exemplified both qualities. These were, emphatically, playthings for the one per cent.
Ettore began his career apprenticing at Prinetti & Stucchi, the Milanese bicycle and tricycle manufacturers, when he was 17; he pre-empted Pimp My Ride by a century or so when he co- opted two De Dion engines to create the world’s first motorised tricycle. He designed his very first car, the Type 1 (all Bugatti’s personal designs had progressive serial numbers, making them catnip for future collectors), in 1900, which won him an award at Milan’s international automobile exhibition, and he went on to work for various pioneering European car firms (De Dietrich in Alsace, Gasmotorenfabrik Deutz in Cologne) while moonlighting on his pet projects — fast, lightweight racing cars — in his various basement workshops. In 1909 he terminated his contract with Deutz, collected his severance pay, and leased a disused dyeworks factory in Molsheim, which became the nerve centre of Automobiles E Bugatti.
From the start, Ettore had to contend with major geopolitical bumps in the road. The outbreak of world war I meant that he had to hide his precious creations in a cave while moving his family (he’d married in 1907, and would have two sons and two daughters) to Milan and then to Paris, where he designed 8-cylinder and 16-cylinder airplane engines to aid the war effort. Following the armistice, he moved back to Molsheim, which had now become French territory, and started to produce racers in earnest. The Type 13 — 1.5-litre engine, 80mph top speed — finished in the top four places at 1921’s Brescia Grand Prix, while 1932’s Type 32 was known as the ‘Tank’ — indeed, with its ultra-streamlined, all-enveloping body and its wheelbase of just two metres, it resembled a weaponised version of a child’s pedal car. The cars often provoked as much perplexity as wonderment, to which Ettore was wont to respond with Olympian disdain: when asked about his stubborn adherence to cable rather than hydraulic brakes, he replied: “I make my cars to go, not to stop.” When another Bugatti owner complained that his car was difficult to fire up on cold mornings, he apparently replied: “Sir! If you can afford a Bugatti, you can surely afford a heated garage.” He could be equally withering when it came to his ostensible competition: “Mr Bentley? He builds fast trucks.”
You would look for a long time at the Type 35, Ettore’s masterpiece and the most successful race car of all time, before the words ‘monster rig’ sprang to mind. Its compact, classical lines — the aluminium body flowed, unbroken, from the small horseshoe-shaped radiator to the pointed tail — were supplemented by a straight-8 engine and cast aluminium wheels, an automotive first. The Type 35 enjoyed more than 2,000 track victories, facilitated both by the fact that, unlike other marques, Bugatti sold its designs to the many gentlemen racers of the era (in the second half of the Roaring Twenties, the company organised an annual single-marque Bugatti Grand Prix, where the first prize was, yes, a Bugatti) and also by the brio of Ettore’s favoured drivers, who sported berets, Peaky Blinder caps, pencil moustaches, linen pinstripes, and freewheeling verve. René Dreyfus described the Type 35 as “competitive right out of the box” (and gave it some extra edge by adding a supplementary fuel tank when winning the 1930 Monaco Grand Prix, thus precluding the need for a pitstop); Albert Divo pushed the 35 to victories in the 1928 and 1929 Targa Florio, then Europe’s most punishing endurance race; Louis Chiron, one of the most tenacious drivers of his day, had been a chauffeur to both Marshals Foch and Pétain during world war I; and Pierre Veyron and Jean-Pierre Wimille later joined the ranks of the ‘Grand Prix Saboteurs’, former drivers who worked with the SOE to run Resistance campaigns and cells in occupied France during world war II, with Veyron receiving the Légion d’Honneur.
He could be withering when it came to his competition. “Mr Bentley?” he once said. 'He builds fast trucks.'
War once again stymied Ettore’s ambitions. He’d already suffered a personal tragedy in 1939, when Jean, his eldest son and presumptive heir, died aged 30 when the Type 57 he was test- driving swerved to avoid a cyclist and crashed into a tree. The following year, Ettore was forced by the Nazi occupiers to sell his company for 150m francs. Though he wrested control of the Molsheim factory back after the cessation of hostilities, he died of a lung infection in 1947, shortly after becoming a French citizen. The Bugatti name, if not its storied legacy, languished until 1998, when it was bought by Volkswagen, who rebuilt the old Molsheim facilities and launched a series of limited-edition supercars that became latter-day Concordes of the road: 2005’s 1001- HP Veyron, with its ability to accelerate from 0 to 100 in under three seconds; 2016’s Chiron, which got Jeremy Clarkson so worked up; and 2019’s Divo, which, despite a top speed of a mere 380 kilometres an hour, sold out its 40 units on the first day of availability, at $5.8m a pop. All three acknowledge the drivers who assisted Ettore in rendering Bugatti a byword for style and speed, and while the new models may not be earmarked exclusively for crowned heads — though we’re sure a few playboy princes are in the mix somewhere — they hold true to Le Patron’s pur sang template: well-chiselled, spirited, bold, handsome, muscular, and made to go, not to stop.
Photo credits: Getty Images
