The Bugatti Story

By William Boddy

“… Ettore Bugatti was by common consent one of the most brilliant designers ever to work in the automotive field. He produced a greater range of models than any other single designer ever has done: racing machines, sports cars and limousines, automobiles of all sizes …
… The Bugatti was probably the most sought-after and admired pre-World War II car existing, the world over…
… Ettore Bugatti mad inventor or mechanical genius ? Viewed from the point of view of his car designs and productions, he was certainly a mechanical genius …” (1960 - W. Boddy)
In this new digital edition, have been included links to the original Bugatti patents (complete documentation).
The contents of the ebook also relate the victories, the types of cars, family albums, and everything about the Bugatti story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edizioni Savine
• Release date: Aug 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9788896365366

Book preview

The

BUGATTI

Story

by W. BODDY

Digital re-edition of:

The Bugatti Story

© 1960 - New York Sports Car Press, Ltd.

Copyright © 2013 Edizioni Savine

All Rights Reserved

Strada provinciale 1 del Tronto

64010 – Ancarano (TE) – Italy

email: [e-mail]

web: www.edizionisavine.com

ISBN 978-88-96365-36-6

Source text and images taken from the Public Domain

Cover images: 1931 Bugatti Type 51 photo (Photo credits: RM Auctions)

Ettore and Jean Bugatti portraits

Bugatti Type 59 technical drawing

NOTES

CONTENTS

Birth of a genius

Early years - france and germany

On his own- first racing success

The war intervenes

Post war the type 35 takes over

Bugatti the innovator

The incredible golden bug

Another war—and the end of everything

The bugatti family album

Victories - bugatti types

The automotive inventions of ettore bugatti

1. BIRTH OF A GENIUS

The Earl of Howe in his Bugatti (1932) at the Gold Star Handicap race.

Ettore Bugatti was by common consent one of the most brilliant designers ever to work in the automotive field. He produced a greater range of models than any other single designer ever has done: racing machines, sports cars and limousines, automobiles of all sizes from tiny toy cars just right for a six-year-old to enormous tourers with engines twice as big as a Cadillac’s. His ears were years, in some cases perhaps decades, ahead of their time. One model of Bugatti racing car won 1,045 races in two years. Another, a sports car, set a speed record that stood for 20 years. Yes, Bugatti motorcars were something quite special. Fewer than 10,000 of them were manufactured during Le Patron’s life-time, but more than 500 still exist, carefully guarded and lovingly maintained. The Bugatti is probably the most sought-after and admired pre-World War II car existing, the world over.

Bugatti himself was probably a genius, or very nearly so. Genius is a term that should be sparingly used, but Bugatti may have been entitled to it, for he certainly had at least some of the attributes of genius, one of which is the ability to accomplish without having been taught.

Ettore Bugatti built his first automobile in 1899, when he was 18 years old, and, it may be, before he had ever seen an automobile. It was a perfectly good car, too: it had an overhead camshaft engine, 90 x 120 mm., coil ignition, a four-speed gear box and final drive by chain. The car was light in weight, a characteristic that was to distinguish all Bugatti originations.

Bugatti made this car in every sense of the word: he made all of the drawings, he made the foundry patterns, he supervised the making of the castings and forgings, and he assembled the machine with his own hands. When it was ready he cranked the engine and drove the car at 40 miles an hour through the suburbs of Milan. It was one of the first automobiles made in Italy.

Bugatti is usually thought of as a Frenchman, since the cars that brought him fame were made in France, but he was born in Milan on September 15, 1881. His father, Carlo Bugatti, was a well-known designer of furniture, and his brother Rembrandt became a sculptor of note, specializing in animal studies. Ettore’s father intended him to have an artistic career and sent him to the Brera Art Academy to study under Prince Paul Troubetzkoi. Here Bugatti showed clear sign of the personality trait that would be predominate in him to the day of his death: a wish to be first, the best, Number One. Comparing his work with that of his brother, he decided that Rembrandt was his superior in artistic talent. If he could not be the best artist in the Bugatti family, then Ettore would be something other than an artist.

Carlo Bugatti had noticed his son’s mechanical bent, and it was not hard for the boy to persuade him that he might do better as an engineering apprentice than as an art student. He owned a motor-driven tricycle and he had demonstrated skill in repairing it. The elder Bugatti agreed, and Ettore went into the Prinetti and Stucchi machine shops as an unpaid apprentice.

A year later he built a tricycle. The tricycle of the time was no child’s plaything, it was a racing machine; and if it was not terribly fast it made up for that in excitement by its inherent instability. Bugatti’s trike was fast enough to warrant his entering it in the Paris-Bordeaux race, and he was running third when the field came into Poitiers at the end of the first day of the race. He was ahead of 34 others in his class when he hit a dog and damaged the tricycle beyond local repair.

He abandoned the tricycle idea after that race and designed an automobile—but an automobile with a difference. It had four engines, one for each wheel. (This is an idea that has reappeared only very recently, in one of the projected designs for the renaissance of the electric automobile). The gear-changing problems involved in four engines were too much, however, and Bugatti abandoned the design, but not before he had persuaded the great Pirelli tire company to make up a special set of tires for it. He drew up design plans for a third car, but Prinetti and Stucchi refused to build it. They had had enough of the automobile, they told him. They saw little future in it, and had decided to concentrate on other things: sewing machines, for example. Bugatti left them and decided to build the car himself.

The project needed finance, of course, and it was not easy to come by. Bugatti was, for one thing, only 18. He had no engineering degree of any kind, and practically no experience. His father declined the honor. Bugatti was enterprising, though; enterprising enough to interest a pair of wealthy Italian noblemen, the Counts Gulinelli. They put up the money. The car was a notable success. It started easily, ran 40 miles an hour, handled perfectly. Bugatti had established another principle for guidance in his later life: the value of patronage by the nobility.

In 1901 an international exhibition was held in Milan and the Bugatti car was of course put on show. It won the Cup of the City of Milan and the gold medal of the Automobile Club of France. An engineer of the famous De Dietrich company of Niederbronn, Alsace, attended the exhibition and was so impressed by the car that he recommended hiring its designer. Since Ettore was still a minor, his father had to sign the contract for him; a contract that gave him $80, $100,