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Bugatti Car ClubsEttore Bugatti was a carpenters son from Milan who studied sculpture at the Brera academy of art before starting an apprenticeship at the ‘Prinetti and Stucci’ bicycle factory at the age of seventeen. The first vehicle Bugatti designed was a three wheeled vehicle with two engines which won several local races and was entered in the Paris to Bordeaux race of 1897. He later designed a vehicle which featured no fewer than four engines but when the company refused to let him build it, he promptly left. In 1899 Bugatti sought financial backing from the Gulinelli brothers and built his first froper car which had a four cylinder overhead valve engine, a four speed gearbox and even a battery powered ignition system, all of which helped Bugatti win a design award from the French Automobile Club. Soon after he asked the ‘de Dietrich’ company of Cologne to build his designs and, after his father agreed to sign the contract on behalf of his underage son, production began. However it soon became apparent that Ettore Bugatti was intent on designing cars with the sole purpose of racing and when he refused to design a production series for the company, his contract was terminated. Bugatti then spent two years working for Emi Mathias, building a four cylinder engine before leaving to set up his own company. In 1909 he bought a former dye works at Molsheim in the Alsace region of what was at that time Germany. He quickly set about building five aircraft and ten cars, the first to be made using the Bugatti name. By 1910 the company was making just five cars a year but when his ‘Model 10’ took second place in the French Grand Prix that year sales began to increase rapidly. During World War I the company produced aircraft engines for France and the USA and the workforce at Molsheim grew to over 1000. Bugatti’s ‘Model 13’ took the first four places at the 1921 Brescia Grand Prix and various model names such as ’29, 30 and 32’ soon followed. It was the 1924 ‘Model 35’ which became one of Bugatti’s most famous creations, introducing aluminium wheels for the first time on any car. By 1926 Ettore Bugatti realised his dream of making the world’s most luxurious car, the ‘Royale’ had a 300 horsepower, 12.7 litre engine, however the launch of this hugely expensive car coincided with the great depression and only three were sold leaving Bugatti in a financial crisis. Unbelievably it was a contract to build trains for the French government between 1932 and 1934 which saved Bugatti from bankruptcy at least until the general strike of 1939 and the outbreak of World War II. After the war ended Bugatti could not afford to build any new models and in 1947 Ettore Bugatti died in Paris. The company was sold in 1963 for its aeroplane parts business, but in 1998 Volkswagen bought the rights to the Bugatti name and designed the ‘EB118’ and ‘EB218’ concept models along with the ‘Chiron’ and infamous ‘Veyron’ models, both of which were named after Bugatti racing drivers. The Bugatti Owners Club car club is dedicated to preserving this famous marque and can be found in this directory.
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