N.2 - March 18th

A tribute to the most refined technology:  a Bugatti museum on the roads of Maremma. 

Maremma, May 2009: this will be the only place in the world where it will be possible  to  admire  more  than  thirty  different  Bugatti  cars,  parading  different  finishings  and  features, thanks to the 130 models that will take part to the international meeting that will  be held for the 100 years of the Company, founded in Alsace in 1909 by the Milanese  Signor Bugatti.   
Ettore Bugatti made history not just as ingenious technician but also as an artist of the  mechanics, a creator and anticipator whose mind was always looking towards the future. His racing cars and his regal saloon cars are considered authentic masterpieces, each  being a unique piece of technological precision, like a chronographer of the old school.

The excellence of the Bugatti marque is also reflected by the sponsors supporting the  Bugatti  International  Meeting:  the  Genevan  Maison  Chopard,  maker  of  watches  and  jewels, owned by the Scheufele family that in addition to manufacturing time clocks also  includes among its productions one of the most successful collections of chronographers,  truly exceptional items for their technique and design;  and Metra, a company from Brescia  specialized in aluminum manufactures that among its technically advanced productions   includes sophisticated vehicle components.  
For all those passionate about car history and mechanics, the passage of the 130  Bugatti will represent a unique opportunity to observe, all together and close up, the best  part of the production characterized by the horseshoe‐shaped radiator.

It will be an open‐air museum, enjoyable for everybody, that will tell a one hundred year old story made of success, downfalls and recoveries.Here following is a brief history of the Bugatti company and its founder, as well as the  data sheets for all the models taking part to the Bugatti International Meeting.

Bugatti: A brief history

Even if Bugatti is considered to be a French company, it was actually founded in 1909 by an Italian in …Germany. Without ever moving from Molsheim, the company ‐ founded by Ettore Arco  Isidoro Bugatti, who never renounced his Italian passport changed nationality when Alsace and  Lorraine became French territories after World War I,  following the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The history of Bugatti, who is considered one of the biggest man of genius among the car  manufacturers, started on 15 September 1881 when Ettore was born in Milan, the son of Teresa Lorioli and Carlo Bugatti, a well known furniture and jewel designer, and the nephew of Giovanni Luigi Bugatti, a sculptor and architect. Beside his grandfather, also his brother became a famous  artist, sculptor and painter, predestined even in his name, Rembrandt Bugatti, who died tragically in 1916 when he was only 31.   In  his  teen,  after  collaboration  with  his  father  as  worker  in  ebony,  Ettore  started  the  Accademia di Brera (a famous Fine Arts Academy in Milan) where, following the family inclination, he attended sculpture and painting lessons. Soon Ettore’s enormous interest for mechanics took  over and he left the Brera at 17.

The substantial modifications he made to a motorized tricycle produced by engineer Prinetti  and the industrial manufacturer Stucchi, convinced the last to hire him as apprentice in their Milanese workshop.    His talent as a self‐made designer became immediately apparent thanks to the project of a tricycle with two single‐cylinder motors that represented the biggest success at Prinetti & Stucchi. For some, this was the beginning of the Bugatti Type 1.Ettore Bugatti won one his first car race in Italy, the Verona‐Brescia‐Mantua‐Verona, driving this three‐wheeled vehicle at an average speed of 40 km/h. It could be said that, albeit indirectly,  young Ettore was the inspiration behind other important races to come, since the people of  Brescia remember 14 March 1899 as the first time they ever saw a racing vehicle.   In the same year, revealing the skills of a good driver, Bugatti won the races Pinerolo‐Turin and Padua‐Treviso, driving a De Dion Bouton on both occasions.

In 1901, thanks to the financial help from his father Carlo and from the Gulinelli family from Ferrara,  Bugatti  made  a  car  (the  Type  2) that  achieved  the  gold  medal  at  the  International Exhibition in Milan. This award attracted the interest of the German baron Eugène De Dietrich  who offered him a job as designer in his car factory. His father Carlo had to sign the contract as Ettore was not yet of age. As a consequence, in 1902 young Bugatti moved to Niederbronn, in Alsace (a German territory at the time), about 50 km north of Strasburg where the De Dietrich factory, an industrial group founded in 1684 and still in operation today, was located. From 1902 until 1904, Bugatti designed various cars, known as Dietrich‐Bugatti, such as  models Type 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.Already in 1904, De Dietrich stopped the car production in Niederbronn and transferred it to  the plant in Lunéville, home to the newly established Societé Lorraine des Anciens Établissements  De Dietrich et Cie, later renamed Lorraine‐Dietrich.  Bugatti preferred to go to work for the factory of Émile Ernest Mathis in Strasburg. There, in  the new plant of the Société Alsacienne de Construction Mécahanique, he worked for three years  as designer   Always in 1904, his father sold the workshop in Milan and moved the family to Paris where he  designed a range of luxury furniture and household objects for various department stores.  On 25 February 1907, Ettore got married to Barbara Mascherpa, with whom he had already  had  a  daughter,  Ébé  Maria  Teresa, born  in  1903.  In  August  of  the  same  year  their  second  daughter, Lidia, was born, who would become much appreciated later on for sketches based on  her uncle Rembrandt’s beautiful drawings.1907 was a year of great changes for Ettore Bugatti. On the first day of September he signed a  contract with Deutz, moving the whole family to Cologne, in the heart of Germany. Committing all the free time he had, including nights and Sundays, Bugatti managed to build  his own workshop, all by himself, located in the basement of his house in the neighborhood of  Muehlheim. Here, in 1908, Ettore built the first prototype of a new, light car while working for Deutz AG  with the title of factory manager and designer, employed by Gustave Langen.  
Bugatti could not yet name the prototype with his own name so he called it Petit Pur‐Sang  (Little Thoroughbred), confirming his great passion for horses, an anticipation of the horseshoe shaped radiator that would become his trademark.   
Bugatti’s first son, christened Gianoberto but nicknamed Jean by all, was born on 15 January  1909 in Cologne.  At the age of 28, Bugatti understood that the time had come to start his own enterprise and  on 15 December 1909 he left Deutz to return to his beloved Alsace, without renouncing his Italian  nationality of which he was always proud.  In  the  surroundings  of  Molsheim,  in  the  area  of  Dorlisheim,  just  over  20  km  west  of  Strasburg, Bugatti, using the considerable gratuity received from Deutz, rented the buildings that  had belonged to an ex paint factory. Before the end of that year, the whole family had returned to Alsace. Ettore Bugatti Automobiles was officially created and started the first day of business on 1  January 1910.   While working at Deutz, the Milanese technician had developed the Type 8, 9 and 10 and his  first production started right with the Type 10 that was later to be the inspiration also for the Type  13, the first car to sport the Bugatti logo. 

The  unmistakable  horseshoe‐shaped  radiator,  surmounted  by  the  red  oval  with  Bugatti  written in white, appeared on the T 13.  Since the beginning, Bugatti said he was convinced that car progress would be determined by  the sports world. For this reason he focused his production on building racing models, even  though he never overlooked touring cars.  In fact, he liked to state that “Bugatti doesn’t build racing cars, all victories are achieved with  standard models”.  Obviously, the price morthan reflected the refined construction technology.  Since 1911, Bugatti enrolled the Type 13 in all the main races, from Le Mans (not yet the 24 Hours) to the Indianapolis 500 Miles, without much luck. In the same year, he designed a new car for Peugeot, the 10‐HP Bébé. In a few years, the workshop in Molsheim had expanded and at the beginning of 1914 more  than 200 workers produced 75 cars per month. At the start of World War I – with Alsace at the  center of the German‐French conflict Bugatti was forced to suspend the activity and take refuge in Milan. When Italy also entered the conflict in 1915, Ettore moved to Paris with his family, where he  designed airplane engines commissioned by Italian and French industries; then, 1917, he also designed a 16 cylinder engine for the US Army. At the end of the war, after the Treaty of Versailles, the Bugattis returned to Alsace, re‐ opened the factory and started producing the Type 13 again.  Sport success, slow to arrive before the war, finally became a reality: in 1920, a Type 13 with a 16 cylinder engine conquered the Gran Prix de la Sarthe in Le Mans; in 1921, the Type 13 won  the first four placements at the Gran Premio Vetturette in Brescia, a success that convinced  Bugatti to name some series of his sports cars after the Lombard city, maybe also in memory of his first win as a driver in 1899.

The success in the races contributed to give fame to the marque and Bugatti managed to buy  the land where his factory was built. In 1922 he opened a magnificent show‐room on the Champs Elysées in Paris. On 23 August of the same year, Ettore and his wife Barbara had another son, Roland Cesare. Sales  of the new model, the Type 30, brought great results with 600 vehicles solbetween  1922 and 1926. Nevertheless, the model that made Bugatti popular in the world more than any other was the Type 35 that entered production in 1924. By the end of the 1920’s, the blue cars had won 2,139  races, a record unbeaten until today. Most ofthe success was due to the use of a new compressor,  in spite of the fact that Ettore Bugatti had always opposed it, considering it too cumbersome  for  his elegant cars.   Among the races to be remembered is Targa Florio, dominated for five years in a row: in  1925 and 1926 with the T 35 driven by Meo Costantin;, in 1927 with the T 35 C driven by Emilio Materassi, and in 1928 and 1929 with Albert Divo at the wheel of a T 35 B and T 35 C. The victories of the Bugatti cars were not so much due to their power and pure speed but  they had more to do with the overall balance of the vehicles. 

To own a Bugatti became a social  imperative also among the rich people who did not take part in the races. Following  this  success,  the  Italian  designer  based  in  France  –  who  used  his  initials,  an upturned E and a B, for his logo – started to design cars for royalties and heads of state, like the  Type 41 Royale, with an eight‐cylinder engine deriving from the aeronautics, with a power of  12,763 cc, that did not meet with much success.   None of the six Type 41 Royale built, all with different bodyworks, was ever bought by a king or prince: its reputation as the most expensive car in the world did not play  in favor  of  its marketing.  The missed sales of the Royale were offset by the good sales of all the other models, like the  Type 44, produced in 1,200 units.  Bugatti’s artistic disposition and eccentricity revealed itself in several ways: he did everything  by  himself  –  he  designed,  managed  the  factory  as  well  as  the  racing  team,  followed  public  relations, designed the advertising posters and even the furniture he owned (a legacy from his  father),  looked  after  a  fox‐terrier  breeding  business  and  owned  high  standard  horse  stables.  Thoroughbred and Pure Blood were terms that he loved to attach to his horses as well as his cars,  so much so that he was always wearing horse riding clothes on very occasion, together with hand‐ made shoes crafted with the form of the foot toes. He was also the owner of a small distillery producing liquors “for friends and for myself”. Following the Great Depression in 1929, sales for the car industry endured a massive slow  down and Ettore Bugatti  dedicated his time to designing for the railway sector. In 1932, he  decided to delegate his son Jean – one of the few collaborators he accepted – to direct the racing  team and design department.   It would turn out to be a great move as Jean had inherited the genes and revealed himself to  be an ingenious designer.   In  1933,  they  started  to  produce  train  cars  and  locomotives,  taking  advantage  of  theimpressive mechanics employed for the Royale, with the enormous 12 liters propulsors. Bugatti built 85 of them and they remained in use in France until the 1950’s. 

Again in 1933, thanks to Jeans’ input, the victory of the Type 51 driven by Achille Varzi at the  Grand Prix of Montecarlo caused  tremendous clamor after the duel with the Alfa Romeo 8C 2300  Monza driven by Tazio Nuvolari. As it was his custom after each victory, Ettore Bugatti would   hoist a three‐color flag on the pennon of the Molsheim factory but the third color was green, it  was the Italian flag.   Shortly after the middle of the 1930’s the racing victories, as well as the sales, started to  decrease sharply as the mechanics of the Bugatti cars, compared with the progress of the Italian  and German manufacturers, started to appear too classic and obsolete. In support of the company’s future came the introduction of the new double‐shaft, overhead  cam engine and the good sales to the railway sector that allowed for financial tranquility. A new incentive also came from the Type 57, mostly designed by Jean Bugatti. One of the most fascinating variations he designed, the Atlantic T 57 SC, presented at the Salon in Paris in 1935, was nicknamed “Sewn by hand” for its perfection. 

This car is considered Jean Bugatti’s  masterpiece as well as one of the most beautiful cars ever produced. The sports version of the T 57 was also an extraordinary racing car that won the Le Mans 24 Hours twice. In 1937 the victory went to Jean‐Pierre Wimille and Robert Benoit in a modified T 57G with an open bodywork and an 8 cylinder, 3,266 cc engine that reached the record average speed of 136.997 km/h. Then, in 1939, there was a new record at the average speed of 139.781 km/h  thanks  to  the  T  57  C  with  yet  another  8‐cylinder  engine,  supercharged,  3,251  cc  with compressor. Behind the wheel was once again Jean‐Pierre Wimille, teamed with Pierre Veyron. Unfortunately, this last period of revival coincided, a few months later, with the beginning of the end of the Bugatti as a myth, caused not only by the advent of World War II.  In fact, on 11 August 1939, while testing the Type 57 that had won the Le Mans, on a straight  road near Duppingheim about 10 km from the factory in Molsheim, Jean had an accident trying to  avoid a cyclist and died when he was only 30 years old.  Ettore, in despair, sought refuge in his office and when he came out to go back home he was  so overwhelmed that he could barely stand on his feet. To those offering to help him he answered  “Everyone must be capable to support their own weight, as heavy as that might be, until the arrival  of darkness”. 

A few months later, in castle Saint Jean, the family home, Ettore’s life saw another chapter coming to and end. In fact, in April 1940 his father Carlo, the architect with a diploma from the Academy of Brera, whose vintage design items are still well priced today, died. The  arrival  of  the  war  brought  more  problems  for  Bugatti,  who  having  kept  his Italian nationality was placed under investigation and had his factory seized. In the same year, Ettore also  divorced from his wife Teresa. Nevertheless, in 1942 Ettore remarried with Geneviève Dercuze, with whom he had another  two children, Therese, born in that same year, and Michel, in 1945.  Pierre Veyron, the test driver hired by Jean Bugatti and Robert Benoit – the two winners at Le Mans – joined the French Resistance against the Nazi occupation. Benoit was executed in a concentration camp and Veyron received the highest French honor, the Legion of Honor. It is interesting to notice that Veyron is today better known because the new German owners of Bugatti have given his name to the Bugatti Veyron of the third millennium than for his racing  victories and heroism during the war. 

At the end of the war, the plant in Molsheim was destroyed. Ettore Bugatti returned to Alsace from Italy and was accused of collaborationism. After a tiring legal battle that lasted for two years, he was recognized innocent and managed to regain ownership of his company in August 1947,  while he was lying ill in Paris, a few days before his death. Ettore Bugatti died in the French capital  on 21 August 1947, following the consequences of a bad flue and cerebral infarction.  He  was buried in the family grave in Dorlisheim, not far from the plant in Molsheim. In 37 years of work he had applied for more than one thousand patents and had built about 8,000 cars that today have become cult objects all over the world, obtaining more than ten  thousand victories and 37 records. After his death, the heir designated by Bugatti himself, his faithful collaborator and old driver Pierre Marco,  tried to revamp the Alsatian company, without success. In 1951, Roland Bugatti, Ettore’s fourth son, together with his mother Barbara’ second  husband, obtained control over the company offering maintenance service for the Bugatti  cars built prior to the war and building engines for the Army.  In 1956, the Bugatti plant in Molsheim closed down definitively.  

Thirty years later, in 1987, the rights to the Marque were bought by Romano Artioli, the Modenese owner of Autoexpò (importer of Suzuki in Italy), who founded a new car plant in  Campogalliano, near Modena. Even though he managed to present some interesting models, the first of which was the EB 110, and in spite of the Lotus acquisition in 1993, the new Bugatti Automobili did not manage to  ake off. Having made true the dream of an Italian Bugatti, the company closed for bankruptcy in  1995.  For some years the Marque was at the centre of the interest of several carmakers, until in 1998 the name Bugatti was bought by Volkswagen AG that re‐established Bugatti Automobiles S.a.s with location once again in Molsheim, Alsace.

Press release N.1 -  January 29th

A one hundred yearlong route through a journey that started in Italy, continued in Germany, was made glorious in France, came back to Italy, then was concluded between Germany and France with a new deviation towards Italy in 2009: whaiis this? The answer is easy for those who love beautiful cars: it is the route taken by the Bugatti marque.

In 1909, in Molsheim (a German territory at that time), Ettore Bugatti – coming from  Milan, his native city ‐ founded the company that still bears his name. Ten years later, following the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Alsace became part of France.In 1987, the epic red and white oval arrived in Italy, in Campogalliano, but after a  decade it was moved back to Molsheim by a German company, Volkswagen AG, that in  1998 became the owner of Bugatti Automobiles.

In May 2009, Bugatti will return to Italy, between the Maremma region and the Elba  Island to be precise, to celebrate its 100th birthday, a century during which the glorious  marque has remained unrivalled.  The honor to hold the party where one hundred birthday candles will be blown, a real tribute that will be held in front of many faithful fans of Ettore Bugatti coming from all over the world, has been assigned to the Country of origin of this legend. In fact, it will be  Bugatti Club Italia, with the organizing support of 2FAST4YOU, that will welcome the  guests  together  with  130  selected  car  models  bearing  the  famous  horseshoe‐shaped  radiator.   In line with the purest Bugatti spirit, the celebration will take place mainly on the  road, with Bugatti cars in movement. Only later in the evening, once the engines have  been turned off, glasses will be raised for a traditional toast… VIVE LA MARQUE!  

BUGATTI CLUB ITALIA 

To travel along the ideal journey again, almost all the cars signed “EB” will be  present, from competition voiturettes belonging to the early decades of the last century  to the incomparable Grand Prix, from essential two seat sports cars to cars that were the  epitome of technology and luxury in those years.  In progressive order, the models will  include: Type 13, T22, T23, T30, T35, T37, T38, T39, T40, T43, T44, T46, T49, T51, T54, T55,  T57, T59….  

This will be the largest Bugatti meeting ever to be organized worldwide, with classic  cars taking part in it coming from 18 different countries.   
These engineering masterpieces will be joined by their modern descendants, the  Veyron GS, that will be setting their imposing tires on Italian roads for the first time.   
When the time came to draw a map of the route for the BUGATTI INTERNATIONAL MEETING, at Bugatti Club Italia – founded in Milan, where Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti was born – they never had any doubts: no other Italian region like Maremma could offer the  perfect combination of locations of great charm and roads that seem to be designed to  guarantee a pleasurable drive through natural sceneries, alternating dense forests by the  sea, hills with century old vineyards, plains covered in olive trees and sunflowers.   Along this inebriating route, Bugattistes will take advantage of stopovers in  medieval villages,  old cathedrals, monasteries,  private villas and castles where they will  enjoy snacks based on top quality local products while soaking up that particular atmosphere, half‐way between sporty and informal, yet exclusive, that characterizes the  most authentic “Bugatti Style”.   
It is no coincidence that Maremma – one of the least populated areas of the peninsula ‐ is the first Italian destination, listed in 11th position, on the chart drawn up by the New York Times concerning the top 44 destinations to visit worldwide.

The participants will enjoy the incomparable occasion to immerse themselves in a typical Italian atmosphere surrounded by art, history, archaeology, oenology and gastronomy, including a touch of maritime tradition thanks to the trip to the Elba Island.   Where Bugatti cultivated the idea to build unique, out‐of‐the‐ordinary, stupefying  and unforgettable cars, the same determination lies today with Bugatti Club Italia and  2FAST4YOU in organizing the Bugatti International Meeting.