The Car on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Completed Bugatti Type 64 Coupe to make debut at Quail Motorsports Gathering

If you're one of the Autoblog faithful you might remember our story on the Bugatti Type 64 Coupe chassis on display at the Mullin Automotive Museum, one of just three built by the French carmaker before the death of Jean Bugatti. At the time, we told you the museum had plans to finalize the construction of the car with custom coachwork - only one example received bodywork from the factory - and now that time has finally come to unveil the finished product. Today it was announced that a "virtually completed" car will make its debut later this month at the Quail Motorsports Gathering in Monterey.
"We've dedicated much of our efforts at the Museum to honor the Bugatti family and the marque, but never have we done something of this scale," said Peter Mullin, Chairman of the Mullin Automotive Museum. "I cannot imagine a greater token of respect to the Bugatti family than to help finish Jean Bugatti's beloved final masterpiece."
We'll have live photos of the completed Bugatti Type 64 Coupe as part of our extensive Monterey coverage next week. Want to see the car in person for yourself? The museum says it will have also have the car on display at their facility in Oxnard, CA later this year.

Bugatti 100P airplane reconstructed, will fly again after public debut

Bugatti has been building some of the fastest vehicles in the world since 1909, but its brief history with airplane racing is less well known to many fans. It started in the '30s when founder Ettore Bugatti believed he could build a plane to win the Deutsch de la Merthe Cup Race. He worked on a design called the 100P that never flew. At least, it never flew until a group of Bugatti fanatics called Le Reve Blue decided to build an exact replica of the plane at the Mullin Automotive Museum's Art of Bugatti exhibition. The plane will make its public debut on March 25 in Oxnard, California.
The 100P was on the cutting edge for 1930s aircraft. It used two Bugatti-built 4.9-liter, straight-eight engines with 450 horsepower each to power two counter-rotating props mounted in tandem at the front of the plane. It boasts an estimated top speed of around 500 miles per hour. Other amazing features for the time included the V-shaped tail, forward-pitched wings and a zero-drag cooling system.
Le Reve Blue took on the project in 2009 to create a replica using the same materials and production processes as the original. The group decided to unveil the finished project at the Mullin because of the museum's commitment to Art Deco and machine-age design. It plans to actually fly the plane at some point in the future as well.

1 of 3 Bugatti EB112 super-sedans built is for sale

Bugatti has never strived to achieve volume, but some of its cars are rarer than others. One is the EB112, an obscure fastback-like sedan envisioned as a follow-up to the EB110, canned when the firm collapsed in 1995, and resurrected by a third-party company in the late 1990s. Historians agree that three examples of the EB112 were built, and the second one has been listed for sale by a dealer in Germany. Presented as a concept at the 1993 edition of the Geneva auto show, the EB112 represented one of the ways that Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli hoped to breathe new life into the storied French carmaker. It took the form of a large, four-door super-sedan with an aluminum body and a naturally-aspirated, 6.0-liter V12 tuned to send about 460 horsepower to the four wheels via a five-speed manual transmission. It offered passengers an interior that was luxurious without being over-the-top. In short, the modern-day Royale had arrived. Bugatti quoted a 0-62-mph time of 4.3 seconds, which was remarkable considering the era and the car's weight, and a top speed of 186 mph. Orders started coming in, but Bugatti filed for bankruptcy in September 1995 and the project was canceled. It closed its factory in Campogalliano, Italy, leaving behind 128 examples of the EB110 and one EB112, but the story doesn't end there: two additional EB112s were left partially assembled inside the so-called Blue Factory. Gildo Pallanca Pastor bought some of the company's assets and asked the Monaco Racing Team to complete the unfinished cars, according to dealer Schaltkulisse. The car that it's selling is the first one of those. Schaltkulisse notes that chassis number 39002 was ordered on April 27, 1993, by Bugatti's Swiss importer and delivered in February 2000. It has been registered in Geneva since 2003 and its odometer displays around 3,900 kilometers, which represents approximately 2,500 miles. It's presented as a one-owner car that's still powered by a front-mid-mounted 6.0-liter V12. Pricing is only available upon request, but don't expect this fascinating part of Bugatti's multi-faceted history to come cheap. We wouldn't be surprised if it costs more than a new Chiron. Related Video: