A Bugatti built 70 years later

 

The Bugatti Type 64 on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum is the culmination of a decade of work and dedication by the owner Peter Mullin (the chairman of the Petersen board of directors), the designer, Art Center College of Design’s Stewart Reed and Mike Kleeves, owner of the Automobile Shaping Company of Kimball Michigan.

The Bugatti Type 64 was conceived by Gianoberto Maria Carlo “Jean” Bugatti in 1937 to be a successor to the type 57 Atlantic coupe with papillon (butterfly -  what we now call gull-wing) doors, with the detailed design work performed by Noel Domboy and Antonio Pichetto. The car was powered 270-cubic inch 2-valve DOHC straight-8 engine with chain-driven camshafts and rode on a 130-inch wheelbase chassis of riveted duralumin (then known as duraluminum) with a cast duralumin firewall and suspension pieces.

Duralumin is an alloy that is 95% aluminum, 4% copper, 0.5% magnesium, and 0.5% manganese which is malleable but after it is heat treated it becomes very hard and strong. Duralumin was used extensively in rigid airships that included the German passenger Zeppelins and the US Navy dirigibles.


While the addition of copper to the alloy added strength it also it also made it susceptible to corrosion. The combination of the labor intensive riveting process and the duralumin corrosion considerations make it hard to believe that the Bugatti type 64 could have ever been viable for production.

The ground-breaking chassis design also used Lockheed hydraulic brakes (with twin master cylinders) and telescopic shock absorbers. The transmission on this car, chassis #64002, is an Armstrong-Siddeley pre-selector gearbox paired with a Daimler fluid flywheel, a forerunner to modern automatic transmissions.    

Alas, the dreams of Jean’s “papillon” doors for the type 64 died with him in a testing accident in August 1939. While he was testing the 1939 LeMans 24-hour race wining supercharged Bugatti type 57G “tank” on a closed public road at night Jean the eldest son of company owner and founder Ettore Bugatti clipped a bicyclist struck a tree and was killed instantly at age 30.       

The Bugatti factory built three Type 64 chassis and engines and it appears that the factory built two bodies - both coupes (one with a “B” pillar – a ‘berline’ and the other a ‘hardtop’ with no “B” pillar) but both versions lacked gull-wing doors. According to the book Bugatti 57 - The last French Bugatti written by Barrie Price in testing, the type 64 “was not up to Bugatti standards with regards to the handling at high speed,” The completed berline Type 64 is shown at the museum Cité of the Automobile in Mulhouse, France which also owns the remaining chassis and engine  

The third Type 64 chassis, #64002 was completed as a running chassis before the project was abandoned.  After it passed through multiple owners, financier, car collector and museum owner Peter Mullin acquired the Type 64 chassis in 2003, Reed designed the body as an homage to Jean Bugatti’s design. Automotive Metal Shaping Company built the water-cut mahogany buck that was then used to form the car’s aluminum body panels. The Mullin car was completed in 2013, both the car and the wooden buck on part of the Petersen permanent display.

 

Photos by the author  

Bugatti Royale at the Petersen

The name Bugatti captivates the imagination of car enthusiasts, whether their interest is focused on the modern sports cars, the famous pre-war racing cars, or the magnificent coach-built road-going masterpieces.

The largest car built by Ettore Bugatti was the Type 41, the Royale, the car of kings.  Originally Bugatti intended to build twenty-five of these monstrous machines but in fact only seven were built, and only three were sold in period, none to royalty.
 

The 169-inch (over 14 feet) wheelbase chassis was sold without the body at a cost of $30,000 (over $400,000 today) during the Great Depression.   The straight-eight Bugatti Royale engine, an aircraft inspired design, with the block and head as a single casting displaces 778 cubic inches.  The massive powerplant which developed perhaps 285  horsepower at a leisurely 1700 revolutions per minute (RPM) was connected to a 3-speed manual transmission

Consider that this one engine displaces more cubic inches than the engines of eight Miller 91 race cars. The engine with just three main bearing a single overhead camshaft and a single carburetor develops 300 horsepower at a sedate 2000 revolutions per minute. The cast-aluminum wheels are 24 inches in diameter integrally cast with the brakes drums. Understandably the cable-actuated brakes without any power assistance were extremely difficult to use to slow the 7000-pound machine.  

This was the first Royale sold in 1931, and was initially fitted with a roadster body with a rumble seat and no headlights designed by Ettore’s eldest son Jean Bugatti. Initially this Royale was known as the ‘Royale Esders Roadster’ after its buyer French textile manufacturer Armand Esders. After its ownership by a French politician who had it re-bodied as it appears today; a coupe for the passengers with the chauffer in an open cockpit.

 

Each Bugatti Royale is named; the example on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum through October is known as the ‘Coupe de ville Binder,’ named after the Parisian coachwork company that crafted its second and current body, Henri Binder.

 

 

The Royale’s radiator cap is a posed elephant from a sculpture by Ettore’s younger brother Rembrandt Bugatti who committed suicide in 1916 in Paris
Click the photograph to enlarge  

After World War 2 during which time it was hidden reportedly in a Paris sewer, the Binder Bugatti made its way to United States where it was owned at various times by Floridian Dudley Wilson, Atlanta banker Mills Lane, and casino owner William Harrah. Homebuilder and United States Air Force Reserve General William Lyon listed the car at auction in 1996 with an unmet reserve of $15 million. The current owner of Royale Coupe de ville Binder is Volkswagen AG, the owner of the modern Bugatti brand which uses the car as a promotional vehicle.

 

Reproduction of an Auto Rail Poster

courtesy of the Bugatti Trust

 

The author recalls reading an article as a child about the Bugatti Royales that noted that due to poor sales, several Royale engines were used to power locomotives. The truth is that the line of Bugatti Auto Rail trains saved the Bugatti company from certain financial ruin. Ettore designed an aerodynamic luxurious rail car with innovative automotive type suspension and braking systems.  

 

 

 

Powered by four of the mighty Bugatti Royale engines the Auto Rail prototype attained 106 miles per hour in testing in the spring of 1933. More than 80 of the railcars were built, with a dozen powered by just two Royale engines. Unbelievably these trains were still in service as late as 1956; the remaining example is in the Cité du Train in Mulhouse France, but the Petersen has one of the rail engines on display.        

 

All photos by the author except as noted