A Ventoux, rebuilt

Few names in motoring carry the weight of Bugatti. For three decades a small works in Alsace built the fastest racing cars, the grandest luxury cars, record-breaking trains and a futuristic aeroplane – all driven by one family that saw engineering as an art form.

Ettore Bugatti was born in Milan in 1881 into a family of artists. His father Carlo was a celebrated furniture designer; his younger brother Rembrandt became one of the finest animal sculptors of his day. Ettore trained in art too, but machines won him over: aged just 17, he fitted a tricycle with an engine.

After designing cars for other makers, he set up his own company in 1909 in Molsheim, then part of Germany. His Type 10 is considered the first “Pur Sang” – thoroughbred – Bugatti, a name that would stick to the marque. The small, light cars quickly proved themselves: in 1911 Ernest Friderich drove a tiny Bugatti to second place at the French Grand Prix, among far larger machines.

When the First World War broke out, Ettore left Alsace, moving first to Milan and then to Paris, where he turned to aviation. Around 1915 he built a large eight-cylinder aero engine, followed by the U-16: two of his straight-eights side by side, geared to a single propeller.

The engine impressed the Americans. The US government’s Bolling Commission bought the design, partly because a 37 mm cannon could fire through the propeller hub, and Duesenberg was chosen to build it. Renamed the King-Bugatti, it passed its military test in October 1918, but the war ended just as production began; about 40 were made. After the war the French aircraft maker Breguet licensed the design as the basis for even more powerful engines.

The link with flying never faded. Ettore stayed close to former war pilots throughout his life, and in 1925 he built another sixteen-cylinder aero engine, the Type 34. A modified form of it would later power the Type 41 Royale.

Back in Molsheim – now French – Bugatti returned to racing. In August 1920 the 16-valve Type 13 won the Voiturette Grand Prix at Le Mans with Friderich at the wheel, Bugatti’s first major victory. From then on the 16-valve cars were known as the “Brescia”.

In 1924 came the car that made Bugatti a legend: the Type 35. Light, agile and beautifully made, it became one of the most successful racing cars in history. Many records were lost in the Second World War, but Bugatti cars are generally credited with nearly 4,000 race wins between 1911 and 1947.

Ettore’s most extravagant dream was a car fit for kings: the Type 41 Royale, with a 12.7-litre straight-eight descended from his aero engines. Its radiator was crowned by a rearing elephant, a sculpture by Ettore’s late brother Rembrandt. It cost around three times as much as a Rolls-Royce. Then the Great Depression struck. By 1933 six cars and 25 engines had been built, but only a handful of Royales found buyers.

Ettore turned that failure into an opportunity. French railways at the time ran mostly on slow, heavy steam trains, so he adapted the unsold Royale engines for a completely new kind of fast railcar: the Bugatti Autorail.

Its engines sat in the middle of the car, directly beneath a raised driver’s cabin, so the driver had the same view in either direction. The pointed, car-inspired nose was shaped for the wind, and in some ways foreshadowed the TGV. In 1934 a Bugatti railcar set a world speed record for trains of 196 km/h, and in total Bugatti built 88 of them. The project is credited with saving the company in hard times. One survives, the “Présidentiel”, at the Cité du Train in Mulhouse.

Long before wind tunnels became standard in car design, Bugatti experimented with streamlining. The fully enclosed Type 32 racer of 1923 was the first car to earn the nickname “Tank”, a name later revived for the Le Mans-winning Type 57G. The Aérolithe of 1935 borrowed Elektron, a magnesium alloy from the aircraft industry, and its riveted seam became the signature of the Atlantic. Aviation was never far from Molsheim’s drawing boards.

In the late 1930s Ettore set out to build the fastest aeroplane in the world. Working with the Belgian engineer Louis de Monge, he developed the 100P, a racer for the Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe air race and a candidate for the world speed record.

Its two Bugatti straight-eights of around 450 hp each sat behind the pilot and drove counter-rotating propellers. Because the engines were modest compared with rival racers, de Monge made the plane as small and slippery as possible, building it from tulipwood and balsa with metal parts from the car factory. It had forward-swept wings, a Y-shaped tail and automatic flaps. Designed to exceed 500 mph at a time when a Spitfire managed about 360 mph, it drew the interest of the French government as the basis for a fighter.

The war intervened. As Paris was about to fall, Bugatti had the nearly finished aircraft taken apart and hidden away. It stayed hidden throughout the war, never flew, and today hangs in the EAA Aviation Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. A replica built by enthusiasts finally took to the air in 2015.

Jean Bugatti’s death in 1939 and the Second World War hit the company hard. Ettore died in 1947, and the post-war Type 101 – essentially an updated Type 57 – could not revive the business. In 1963 the company was sold to Hispano-Suiza.

In 1987 the Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli brought the name back. His EB110 was unveiled in Paris on 15 September 1991, exactly 110 years after Ettore’s birth; 139 were built before the factory closed. The Volkswagen Group revived Bugatti again in 1998, returning it to Molsheim with the Veyron of 2005 and the Chiron of 2016. In 2021 control passed to a joint venture with the Croatian company Rimac, and the hybrid Tourbillon became the first Bugatti in over twenty years without the W16 engine. In 2026 Porsche announced it would sell its remaining stake to Rimac.

What set Bugatti apart was not one invention but an attitude. Ettore and Jean designed cars the way artists make sculpture: every part had to work perfectly and look right, even out of sight. Lightness and precision mattered more than brute force. And their curiosity reached well beyond the car – into aero engines, trains and aircraft – with ideas flowing back and forth between them. The Royale engine began life in the sky and ended up on the rails; the streamlining of a racer found its way into a railcar nose.

The Type 57 sits at the heart of that story: the last great Bugatti of the classic era, created by Jean at the height of his powers, just before the world changed.

From Ettore’s first designs in 1900 to the last classic Grand Prix car in 1956: every Bugatti type at a glance, alongside the aero engines, the railcar and the aeroplane.

The Type 57 was Bugatti’s grand tourer: fast, comfortable and built to cover long distances. Between 1934 and 1940 some 710 left the works in Molsheim.

It was the first model created almost entirely under Jean Bugatti’s direction. Technically, it broke with tradition: it was the first Bugatti with the gearbox fixed directly to the engine, and with a single-plate clutch. At its heart is a 3.3-litre straight-eight with twin overhead camshafts.

Where earlier Bugattis were often built in small numbers for individual clients, the Type 57 offered one solid platform with a range of factory bodies. Customers who wanted something of their own could buy a rolling chassis and have it clothed by the coachbuilder of their choice. As a result, hardly any two Type 57s are exactly alike.

Of all the stories in Bugatti’s history, none is as mysterious as that of chassis 57453: Jean Bugatti’s own Atlantic, known simply as La Voiture Noire – the black car.

Only four Atlantics were ever built, and Bugatti sold just three of them to customers. The first went in 1936 to the British banker Victor Rothschild. The second, Jean kept for himself. One source even claims it was the only Atlantic fitted with a supercharger at the factory, making it the one true 57SC from the start – though accounts differ on this point.

The car was more than a personal toy. Fitted with a front bumper and lower doors, it served as the model for Bugatti’s brochure photographs and as a demonstrator at international motor shows such as those in Lyon and Nice.

The name Atlantic carried a story of its own. It honoured Jean Mermoz, the pioneering aviator and friend of Jean Bugatti, who never returned from a flight over the South Atlantic.

Then the car vanished. When war broke out and German troops entered Alsace, La Voiture Noire was sent away to a safe region – and was never seen again. More than eighty years later its fate is still unknown. Was it destroyed, taken, or is it still hidden somewhere, waiting in a barn? Nobody knows, and that is exactly why it has become the greatest legend in Bugatti’s history.

Beyond the factory, more than twenty coachbuilders across Europe bodied Type 57 chassis. Gangloff in Colmar held a special place: it worked so closely with Molsheim that factory and Gangloff bodies are still often confused. A selection:

The Ventoux takes its name from Mont Ventoux, the bald giant of Provence. It was the best-selling body of the Type 57.

A two-door, closed four-seater: sportier than the four-door Galibier, more practical than the two-seat Atalante. The Ventoux was among the very first designs Jean Bugatti approved for the Type 57, and it was a Ventoux in which Bugatti unveiled the new supercharged engine at the 1936 Salon.

The Ventoux was offered with either two or four side windows, known as two-light and four-light; 57364 is a four-light. The design was revised several times over the years, so early and late examples differ noticeably. After the Paris Salon of October 1938, the factory ended Ventoux production.

In Bugatti’s price list of 1 October 1934, the Ventoux coach cost 82,800 francs, against 62,000 for the bare chassis.

Chassis 57364 was ordered in late 1935 by Roger Spiessert, director and animal tamer of the Pinder circus, through the Bugatti agency in Tours. It was finished with Jean Bugatti’s four-light Ventoux coachwork, without bumpers.

Spiessert was a flamboyant showman and a Bugatti enthusiast who had already owned a Type 37 Grand Prix car and an earlier Ventoux, chassis 57213, which he traded in for this one. He asked the factory for a series of personal touches: a highly polished black finish, bright red interior trim, light tobacco-coloured carpets, privacy curtains for the rear windows. He performed under the stage name Roger Spessardy, and a surviving photograph shows him in front of his new Bugatti holding two lion cubs.

When the car failed to sell at auction in 2024, we bought it privately soon afterwards. It was love at first sight – for the car itself, for its history and for the story of the circus tamer and the long journey from Bordeaux to California and back.

Our goal is clear: to return 57364 to exactly how it left Molsheim in 1936, in concours condition. Because the car has never been restored and has hardly been altered, almost everything we need to do that is still here – down to the red leather on the doors and Marc Lepeut’s name on the dashboard.

Molsheim, where 57364 was built in 1936, is still Bugatti’s home today. In June 2024 Roger was there for the world premiere of the Tourbillon, the new Bugatti. On 22 June more than 200 guests gathered at the château to see the new car alongside the most iconic Bugattis of the past, displayed on the grounds.

Among them, on the lawn and under the pavilions: a Royale and several Type 57s – the same family as 57364, back where it all began.