It’s not known whether Ettore Bugatti ever read Wind in the Willows, but I can confirm that there is very little half so much worth doing as simply messing about in Bugatti boats. The quirky, almost cartoonish Bugatti You-You – which takes its name after the colloquial French term for “little boat” – could not be further removed from the legendary French racing blue grand-prix cars, or the luxury grand routiers produced in the company’s pre-war pomp. Moreover, the You-You is as rare, or rarer still, than some of the most exalted and valuable Bugatti cars made in those glory years.
In a changed post-war world order in which the pared-to-the-bone Citroen 2CV fitted the mood of austerity, Bugatti struggled to adapt, producing no more than a handful of cars whose outdated engineering and styling, not to mention the grandiose pricing, failed to hit the mark.
It was then, perhaps as a side line or merely to bring in some much needed cash flow, that the Italian-born Ettore Bugatti turned to producing the You-You at a boatyard he owned on the banks of the Seine in a suburb of Paris. However, the double-skinned mahogany-planked You-You was most certainly not the 2CV of boats. It seems the You-You was produced from 1946 to 1947, the year too of Ettore’s death, but as with everything to do with the You-You, hard facts are in scant supply. No one knows how many of these minnow motor launches were built, nor quite when, nor for, named after his wife, as the fit out was incomplete at the time of his death. Neither is it known for sure that he ever got to helm a You-You.
