Molsheim Edition · Origins
Every model, the versions that mattered, the races that made the name and the people behind them. Scroll through the years, filter what you care about and open any moment for the details and sources.
149 moments · 30 model generations · 145 years
The son of a Milanese furniture designer skips art school for motor tricycles, then designs cars for other people’s companies while dreaming up a tiny one of his own.
1881
Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti arrives in a family of artists: his father Carlo makes Art Nouveau furniture and jewellery, his grandfather was an architect and sculptor. His parents expect him to follow them into art.
1898
A first ride on a motor tricycle decides it. Ettore becomes an unpaid apprentice at the Milan firm Prinetti & Stucchi and soon fits a second engine to one of its machines. In his first open road race, it averaged about 20 km/h before breaking down.
1901
With money from a Count Gulinelli, Ettore builds a further prototype and shows it at a trade fair in Milan, where it takes a prize. He is 19, and carmakers start to notice.
1902
Baron de Turckheim of De Dietrich hires the young Italian to run car development at Niederbronn, in Alsace, then part of Germany. The cars are sold as De Dietrich, licence Bugatti. It is the start of Ettore’s lifelong tie to the region.
1907
The gas-engine maker Deutz, co-founded by the inventor Nikolaus Otto, wants to build cars and puts Ettore in charge of production. He moves into a villa near the Cologne factory, and marries Barbara Mascherpa the same year.
1908
While still on the Deutz payroll, Ettore builds his own idea of a car at home: tiny, light and with an overhead-cam four. When big engines of four to twelve litres are the norm, this one displaces little more than one. Bugatti counts it as its first car.
In a disused factory in what is then Germany, Ettore starts building light cars that embarrass far bigger machines. War sends him away and the racing parts underground.
1909
Having left Deutz, Ettore takes over an empty factory in Molsheim, an Alsatian town then in Germany. He has raised the money to build a first small run of cars. The company will carry his name for the next five decades.
Ettore’s first son is christened Gianoberto. Once the family settles in Alsace he becomes known as Jean, the French form of Gian, and grows up on the factory floor.
1910
The Type 10 evolves into the Type 13, now with about 1.4 litres and the Bugatti name on it. Five are built in the first year, and the longer Types 15 and 17 soon join it as road cars.
1911
Ernest Friderich drives a Type 13 in the Grand Prix de France against cars with many times its capacity. There was no room for a spare wheel, so the mechanic hugged one all race. Most of the field breaks down in the heat, and the little car is still running far behind Hémery’s winning Fiat.
1912
Against the logic of the Type 13, Ettore also builds a chain-driven sports car with a 5,027 cc four and three valves per cylinder. It revs to only about 2,400 rpm but tops some 150 km/h. Just seven are made and three survive. Ettore races the first himself.
1913
The famous aviator, days away from flying across the Mediterranean, gets chassis 474 and has Labourdette body it with offset seats. After the war it reaches Britain, where the racer Ivy Cummings names it “Black Bess”.
1914
An Italian running a factory in German Alsace, Ettore leaves for Milan with two racing cars, and parts from the other racers are buried at Molsheim before he goes. The two cars are hidden in a cave that floods. Production stops until the war is over.
1915
Now in Paris with his family, Ettore designs a 250 PS straight-eight for aircraft, then 16-cylinder engines made of two eight-cylinder blocks side by side on one crankcase. The idea of the straight-eight will return in his cars.
1916
The sculptor, known for his bronzes of animals, takes his own life in Paris after volunteering at a military hospital in Antwerp. A decade later his dancing elephant will stand on the radiator of the Type 41 Royale, the only Bugatti with a mascot.
1918
France showed no interest, but the Americans take up the 16-cylinder design, and Friderich is sent over to oversee it at Duesenberg. Plans call for at least 2,000 of the King-Bugatti engines. The Armistice cancels them, and perhaps 40 are made.
Molsheim is now French, and Bugatti wins almost everywhere: Brescia, the Targa Florio, Monaco. At the height of it all, Ettore builds the largest car in the world.
1919
Alsace returns to France and Ettore returns to his factory. Securing a stand at the last minute, he shows three light cars, Types 13, 22 and 23, sharing a new 1,368 cc four with four valves per cylinder.
1920
Friderich wins the Coupe des Voiturettes at Le Mans in a 16-valve Type 13, at about 92 km/h on average. The team has rebuilt its racers around parts that spent the war underground.
1921
A one-off road car shown in Paris brings the straight-eight from Ettore’s aero engines to the road. It introduces the rectangular block and cam box that define later Bugattis, but never reaches production. The car survives at Mulhouse.
At the voiturette Grand Prix in northern Italy, Friderich leads home de Vizcaya, Baccoli and Marco, all in 16-valve Type 13s. Orders pour in, and from then on the car is simply the Brescia. Around 2,000 are sold by 1926.
1922
The racer’s two-litre straight-eight goes into a chassis derived from the Brescia. About 600 are built by 1926, starting the line of touring Bugattis that sells in far greater numbers than the Grand Prix cars.
Four streamlined Type 29s with a two-litre straight-eight start the French Grand Prix almost on Bugatti’s doorstep. Three finish, in second, third and fourth places, behind the winning Fiat.
1923
Bartolomeo Costantini, an Italian First World War pilot with six victories, signs up as a driver. Ettore has a soft spot for aviators. He will win Targa Florios and then run the racing team for years.
For the French Grand Prix, Ettore wraps a very short chassis in a stubby, wing-like aluminium body that looks like a battle tank. It tends to lift and handles badly, and three of the four retire. Friderich still brings his home third. It is the Type 32’s only Grand Prix.
1924
Five of Ettore’s new two-litre Grand Prix cars go to the French Grand Prix. They are fast in practice, but badly vulcanised tyres ruin the race. It is an unpromising start for the car Bugatti credits with over 2,000 wins.
To cut unsprung weight, Ettore gives the Type 35 cast aluminium wheels with eight flat spokes and the brake drum built in, plus a hollow forged front axle of about ten kilos. The eight-spoke design becomes a Bugatti signature.
1925
In the mountains of Sicily, Meo Costantini takes a Type 35 to victory in one of the toughest road races there is. He wins again in 1926, and Bugatti will take five in a row, through to 1929.
1926
Just two years after its disappointing debut, the Type 35 family gives Molsheim the title. By now Bugatti’s racer is winning all over Europe, many times in customers’ hands.
At the peak of the racing years, Ettore builds the opposite of a Bugatti: over six metres long, 4.3 metres between the axles, up to 3.5 tonnes. The prototype’s straight-eight displaces 14.7 litres. It is meant for monarchs, and he plans a run of 25.
Ettore and Jean build a small electric Type 35 for Ettore’s youngest son. Visitors to Molsheim want one too, so it goes into production as the Baby, later known as the Type 52. About 500 are made from 1927 to 1936.
1927
The supercharged 2.3-litre engine of the Type 35B goes into a close-coupled four-seater tourer. It is good for over 100 mph when most fast cars do around 70. About 160 are made, plus a later roadster, the Type 43A.
1928
The Monte Carlo-born former dancer, who started in a second-hand Brescia, gets a works seat and wins immediately, in Rome, on the Marne, at San Sebastián and at Monza. Of the 26 top races of 1928, Bugatti’s own count gives its drivers 23.
The Czech driver, who has memorised the course over weeks of practice, takes her privately entered Type 35B into the lead on elapsed time, the first woman to head a race of this rank. A puncture and overheating on the last lap drop her to the top five.
1929
Two years after the circuit opened, Louis Chiron wins Germany’s Grand Prix in a Type 35C after nearly five hours on the Nürburgring. Another Type 35C, driven by “Georges Philippe”, the alias of Philippe de Rothschild, finishes second, twelve minutes back.
Albert Divo, a former pilot and mechanic born Diwo, wins in Sicily for the second year running, in a Type 35B. It completes Bugatti’s run of five in a row, from 1925 to 1929.
After Leon Duray’s front-drive Miller 91s prove fast but fragile at Monza, Bugatti takes both in exchange for three Type 43s. In Molsheim the twin-cam engines are stripped and studied. Their head design shapes the next Bugatti engines.
Launched at the Paris Motor Show, this large luxury car with a 5.4-litre straight-eight sits between the three-litre Type 44 and the Royale. Its gearbox sits in unit with the rear axle, which makes the ride harsh.
Sixteen cars start on the new street circuit, with grid places drawn by lot, and eight are Bugattis. After almost four hours, Williams’s Type 35B beats Bouriano’s Bugatti and Caracciola’s heavily favoured Mercedes. His prize is 100,000 francs.
1930
A short, sporting coupé with a supercharged five-litre straight-eight and 225 hp, the Type 50 takes the lessons of the Miller to the road. Jean’s bodies, with two-tone paint and sloping tails, set the look of the decade.
René Dreyfus wins the second Monaco Grand Prix in his own Bugatti, ahead of the factory cars of Chiron and Bouriat. Bugatti has now won both editions.
The Depression leaves the Royale without buyers and railcars save the factory. Ettore’s son takes charge, draws the Atlantic, wins Le Mans twice and dies at 30.
1931
It looks almost the same as its predecessor, but the supercharged 2.3-litre eight now has twin overhead camshafts, modelled on the Miller’s head. Jean takes on a larger role. About 40 are built, and they soon struggle against state-backed Italian and German rivals.
Sharing a Type 51, the two stars give the new car its first major win. The same year Williams and Conelli share another to victory in Belgium.
Louis Chiron takes the third Monaco Grand Prix on the streets where he was born. No other Monégasque would win it until Charles Leclerc in 2024. Decades later, Bugatti gives his name to a hypercar.
1932
Six years after the prototype, the textile magnate Armand Esders buys the first customer Royale. Jean, aged 23, draws a two-seat roadster for it. Esders only plans to drive by day, so it has no headlights at all.
A detuned Type 51 engine goes into the Type 54’s heavier chassis, and Jean draws a roadster body with long, sweeping wings and two-tone paint. Only 38 are built, by July 1935. It is one of the most admired sports cars of the decade.
A five-litre racer with drive to all four wheels and three differentials, tried for the tight Monaco circuit. The strong Albert Divo climbs out worn out after practice and races a Type 51 instead. Jean crashes one that summer at Shelsley Walsh.
1933
Left with Royale engines nobody will buy, Ettore turns them into fast petrol railcars. Tested near Molsheim, they run with two or four engines, and the driver sits in a central cabin. These trains bring in money and expand the factory through the Depression.
Achille Varzi’s Type 51 wins an epic duel with Tazio Nuvolari’s Alfa Romeo 8C. It is Bugatti’s fourth win in the first five Monaco Grands Prix, and its last there.
Bugatti’s last great Grand Prix car uses a 3.3-litre straight-eight in a lightened frame, with piano-wire spoked wheels. Elegant and superbly built, it arrives as new German teams change racing for good. Eight are made.
1934
Jean replaces the sprawling range with a single base car, a 3.3-litre twin-cam eight with a family of bodies: Galibier saloon, Ventoux two-door, Stelvio cabriolet, Atalante coupé. Some 700 to 800 are built by 1940.
The four-engined “Présidentiel” version, with 800 hp, reaches 196 km/h, a world record for rail. Railway companies can now cut long journeys drastically.
With the German teams absent and the Alfas out by lap 30, René Dreyfus and a team-mate finish first and second at Spa in Type 59s. The win comes after Mercedes and Auto Union pull out in a row over a Belgian tax on their fuel.
1935
Jean’s prototype coupé is panelled in Elektron, a magnesium alloy from aviation that cannot be welded, so the panels are riveted along a raised central seam. The car soon vanishes, probably broken up, but the seam lives on in the Atlantic.
1936
Frustrated by the general strikes of 1936 and labour trouble at Molsheim, Ettore moves to Paris. His son takes on the factory, the sales offices and the racing department, at 27.
Only four are built up to 1938: long-bonneted, low coupés with a riveted seam running from nose to tail, now in plain aluminium but kept for style. The first goes to Victor Rothschild, and Jean keeps the second for himself. They are among the most valuable cars in the world.
After a dismal showing for French cars in 1935, the organisers run the Grand Prix for sports cars. Wimille and Sommer win the 1,000 km at Montlhéry in a streamlined, fully enclosed Type 57.
Jean Mermoz, Jean Bugatti’s friend and the first pilot to fly across the South Atlantic, disappears over that ocean. The coupé until then known as the Aéro is renamed in his memory.
1937
Bugatti’s first Le Mans win comes with the streamlined Type 57G. After the fatal multi-car accident in the race’s early laps removes a main rival, the pair cruise home 100 km clear, at a record pace, passing 2,000 miles in 24 hours for the first time.
1938
Encouraged by French officials, Ettore works with engineer Louis de Monge on a wooden, V-tailed racer with two Bugatti eights buried in the fuselage driving contra-rotating propellers. War stops it before it flies. It is hidden at Ettore’s estate and survives today in the USA.
1939
Planned as the new top Bugatti for 1940, it is an Atlantic-style coupé on a light alloy chassis with a 4.4-litre twin-cam eight and doors that open upwards. Three chassis are begun, but only one body is finished when Jean dies.
Bugatti brings a single supercharged Type 57C with a tank body. Wimille and test driver Pierre Veyron outlast Sommer’s Alfa Romeo and Gérard’s Delage. Ettore would later claim the bonnet was never opened during the race. It is Bugatti’s last great racing win.
On a closed stretch of road near the factory, Jean takes the Tank out at night to prepare it for La Baule. A cyclist gets onto the road near Duppigheim. Jean swerves and hits a tree. He is 30. War breaks out three weeks later, and the race he was preparing for never takes place.
Germany takes the factory, France then confiscates it, and three of the marque’s drivers join the Resistance. Ettore wins his plant back weeks before his death.
1940
Ettore has moved what he can to Bordeaux, where he has a boatyard. The occupiers bring it back, install Hans Trippel to build amphibious vehicles and torpedoes, and pay Ettore about half what the plant is worth. With the money he buys La Licorne, near Paris, in 1942.
1943
William Grover-Williams, parachuted into France in 1942, has been running a Special Operations Executive network. The Germans find him at Robert Benoist’s château. He is executed at Sachsenhausen in 1945.
1944
After escaping once and training in England, Benoist returns to lead a Resistance network, with Wimille as his deputy. Captured in June 1944, he is hanged at Buchenwald. Wimille evades capture and is the only one of the three driver-agents to survive.
1945
In the Bois de Boulogne, Wimille arrives too late to practise, so starts his 4.7-litre Bugatti from the back and still takes the Coupe des Prisonniers from Sommer’s Talbot. Ettore attends in a Royale. One of the day’s races is named for Benoist.
1946
At the first post-war Paris Salon he shows the Type 68, a 370 cc supercharged twin-cam four, and the first engines of the 1.5-litre Type 73. He finally takes French citizenship, as the authorities have treated the Italian-born owner as a suspect. He also remarries, after Barbara’s death in 1944.
1947
France confiscated the plant at the Liberation, arguing collaboration, and Ettore had to fight in the courts to get it back. He wins, but he is gravely ill by then after a stroke, and may never have known.
He dies at 65, after months bedridden, and is buried in the family plot at Dorlisheim. Weeks later his staff place a Pourtout-bodied Type 73 coupé on the Paris Salon stand in his memory. Without him the project is dropped.
A warmed-over Type 57, a mid-engined Grand Prix car that lasts 18 laps and a final Italian-bodied roadster. Then the name passes to aerospace, and the cars to collectors.
1950
The American racer and yachtsman gets the two cars still held by the Bugatti family, reportedly cheaply, with a refrigerator as part of the deal, by his own account. One of them was the only Royale still running when all six met at Pebble Beach in 1985.
1951
Led by the longtime manager and ex-racer Pierre Marco, Molsheim updates the pre-war Type 57: same 3.3-litre engine, modern bodies by Gangloff. The press is delighted. But it is a 15-year-old design at an astronomical price, and buyers stay away. Fewer than ten are built.
1952
A revised Gangloff cabriolet with a cleaner nose heads Bugatti’s last Paris show as an independent firm. By 1953 two chassis are still unsold. Molsheim lives on subcontract work.
1955
Roland Bugatti wants to go back to racing and hires Gioacchino Colombo, of Ferrari and Maserati fame. His 2.5-litre straight-eight sits crossways behind the driver, a first for a Bugatti. Roland insists on a solid front axle because his father would have wanted it.
1956
Maurice Trintignant, recent winner at Monaco, gives the Type 251 its only race, at the French Grand Prix. It handles poorly and is far off the pace, and he stops after 18 laps. It is Bugatti’s sole World Championship start. Both cars are preserved at Mulhouse.
1957
Roland Bugatti’s final road car study is a small roadster designed by Michelotti, with a 1.5-litre twin-cam four. It is shown to investors for years but stays a one-off. It now lives at Mulhouse.
1963
Molsheim’s works and assets pass to Hispano-Suiza, which wants the capacity for defence contracts and not the cars. Work on a planned V12 grand tourer, the Type 451, stops. The original Bugatti car company is finished.
As the factory goes, the Alsatian textile magnate takes the remaining cars, about twenty of them. Among them is Ettore’s own Royale coupé, which the family sold after money troubles. Schlumpf wants to bring every Bugatti he can back to the region.
1964
After two years of haggling, Schlumpf buys the collection of American John Shakespeare, then the world’s largest, for 85,000 dollars including shipping. It includes a Royale and Ettore’s electric runabout. His inspector had warned him about birds nesting among the neglected cars.
1965
The American stylist takes the final unused Type 101 chassis, has Ghia shorten it by 46 cm and bodies it as a low roadster with a bold horseshoe grille, hoping to spark a revival. Finance never comes. It is the last of the Type 101s.
1968
The state engine group Snecma takes over Hispano-Suiza, and with it the Molsheim works, by now an aircraft parts maker. For now, the name lives on only on aircraft components.
Bugatti builds no cars in these years. Its story lives on in a closed mill in Mulhouse, until the workers open the doors.
1977
While the Schlumpf brothers’ textile group collapses and they take refuge in Basel, workers enter the old Mulhouse mill that hides the collection. They hold it for about two years and let the public in.
1981
After the occupation and the liquidation, the collection stays together in Mulhouse as the National Automobile Museum, with more than 400 cars. Bugatti later calls it one of the great repositories of its own history.
An Italian importer buys the name, builds a superb factory near Modena and launches the EB110. Eight years later it is all over.
1987
After discreet talks with the French government, the Italian car importer and Ferrari dealer buys the trademark and founds Bugatti Automobili S.p.A. The marque has built no cars for decades.
Christie’s sells the Kellner-bodied Type 41 in London for a figure that turns the Royale, a commercial failure in its day, into one of the most valuable cars in the world.
1988
A styling buck from Marcello Gandini, the man behind the Miura and Countach, sets the basic shape. Artioli’s cousin, the architect Giampaolo Benedini, then rounds off its sharp edges and extreme wedge.
1990
Italdesign shows a mid-engined two-seat coupé at the 63rd Turin Motor Show, based on Bugatti technical drawings, with wheels that nod to the Royale. The production car will take a different shape.
Molsheim has no engineers left, so Artioli builds near Modena, close to Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini. Benedini designs the 240,000-square-metre site, opened on what would have been Ettore’s 109th birthday.
1991
The EB110’s 125 kg carbon tub comes from Aérospatiale. Bugatti presents it as the first time a road-going production car has used the technology, and it sets a recipe its later cars will keep.
Artioli’s first car takes its name from Ettore’s initials and the anniversary it marks. A carbon chassis, four-wheel drive and a quad-turbo V12 make it a very different kind of supercar.
1992
Months after the GT, Geneva sees a lighter and more powerful version of the car with about 610 PS. Fewer than 40 are made.
On the high-speed ring in southern Italy, a GT is measured at 342 km/h, a figure Bugatti publicises as a world record for a homologated road car.
1993
Giugiaro gives Bugatti a sweeping four-door with a 6.0-litre V12 set behind the front axle, on the EB110’s carbon chassis. Artioli would later recall that it drove like a go-kart.
While still building the EB110, Artioli takes on a second carmaker, Britain’s Lotus. The investment adds to the debts that will soon overwhelm Bugatti.
1994
The F1 driver tried several supercars for a magazine test and went straight to Campogalliano afterwards. Artioli remembers that he did not ask for a discount.
The marque that won in 1937 and 1939 returns to the 24 Hours. The car qualifies 17th but does not finish, and it remains the last Bugatti factory racer seen at Le Mans.
1995
The Monegasque businessman and racer Gildo Pallanca Pastor takes a production-based Super Sport to 296 km/h on the ice at Oulu, in Finland.
The supercar market collapses, suppliers go unpaid and Artioli files on 23 September. Tools are left on the workbenches of the blue factory, and the EB112 never reaches customers from Campogalliano.
1996
Pallanca Pastor gets his EB110 Sport Competizione out of the bankruptcy assets and races it at Daytona. A crash at Dijon in June, with no spare parts left, ends his plan to reach Le Mans.
Ferdinand Piëch buys the marque and sends it back to Alsace. A run of W18 concepts gives way to one vast idea: 1,001 PS and 16 cylinders.
1998
Under chairman Ferdinand Piëch, the Volkswagen Group acquires the rights to the name. The marque returns to the Alsatian town where Ettore built his first car under his own name in 1909.
The first concept of the Volkswagen years is a two-door by Giugiaro, built round a 6.3-litre W18 from Wolfsburg. Italdesign calls it an engine of a type never before designed for a car.
Pallanca Pastor also bought three unfinished saloons from the bankruptcy. His Monaco Racing Team completes two of them, so the car Artioli could not launch does at last exist in small numbers.
1999
Drawn by a young Jozef Kabaň under Hartmut Warkuß, the concept shown at Tokyo leans back where other supercars lean forward. It is the first car to carry the Veyron name.
Volkswagen asks Giugiaro to rework the EB 112 prototype of 1993. The result is a longer four-door with the W18 up front, shown at Geneva. It never enters production.
The new owner of the marque pays a reported $20 million for the Binder-bodied Type 41. The car goes on to live at the Autostadt in Wolfsburg.
At Frankfurt, Fabrizio Giugiaro’s mid-engined concept honours driver Louis Chiron. It sits on the four-wheel-drive chassis of a Lamborghini Diablo VT, and its name is the one the marque will reuse in 2016.
2000
Practical limits rule out the W18, and the Veyron concept is relabelled 16/4 with a W16 and four turbos. The target becomes 1,001 PS. Piëch is said to have first sketched the W layout on a bullet train in Japan.
2001
The project moves from show car to programme, and a further concept at Frankfurt comes much closer to the final dimensions and interior. Production will still take four years and many delays.
Four hundred and fifty cars rewrite what a road car can do, with speed records and a stream of ever more elaborate editions.
2005
After years of technical delays, Molsheim starts building a car that passes 400 km/h and still carries a luxury cabin. Bugatti’s 450 cars will define the idea of the modern hypercar.
Volkswagen could not buy Ettore’s old works, still in aerospace use under Snecma, so it builds fresh in the grounds of the Château Saint Jean. The hall is laid out in the shape of the Bugatti macaron.
2008
The Fbg par Hermès edition, shown at Geneva, pairs the W16 with a bull calfskin interior for €1.55 million before taxes. It is limited to four cars.
The Grand Sport keeps a removable clear roof and carries an emergency soft top that limits the car to 130 km/h. With the hard panel fitted, the claim is still 252 mph.
2009
In Bugatti’s centenary year, this one-off Grand Sport gets its two-tone look from materials alone, with royal-blue tinted carbon fibre against polished aluminium in place of any paint.
Bugatti shows a W16 limousine to invited guests at Molsheim and starts sounding out customers. It is meant to be the ultimate saloon, but it never reaches production.
2010
At Ehra-Lessien, with TÜV and a Guinness representative watching, the 1,200 PS Veyron takes the road-car speed record: 427.933 km/h one way and 434.211 km/h the other. Customer cars are limited to 415 km/h.
2012
Shown at Geneva, the Grand Sport Vitesse puts the Super Sport’s power into the open car. Bugatti builds 92 of them.
The French conceptual artist paints a Grand Sport with the technical equations Bugatti’s engineers used to develop the car. The result is a one-off rolling artwork.
2013
Starting with Jean-Pierre Wimille, a run of Vitesse editions honours the heroes of Bugatti’s past. There are six themes, each with its own colours and finishes.
The Chinese driver takes a Grand Sport Vitesse to the top of the open-car table at Ehra-Lessien. Bugatti marks it with an eight-car World Record Car Edition.
2014
The fifth Legend breaks the pattern by honouring a car and not a person: the Type 18 once owned by aviator Roland Garros. It wears black with 24-carat gold accents.
2015
Chassis 450, a Grand Sport Vitesse in red and black exposed carbon, stands next to chassis number one. Red carbon has never been used on a Veyron before.
Built with Polyphony Digital, the Vision Gran Turismo wears the two-tone blue of the Type 57 G Tank that won Le Mans in 1937. Its shape previews the Chiron, and it uses a pre-production Chiron chassis.
A successor with 1,500 PS breaks 300 mph, and coachbuilding returns to Molsheim with the Divo, La Voiture Noire and the Centodieci.
2016
Named after Louis Chiron, the new car brings 1,500 PS and 1,600 Nm, with road use limited to 420 km/h. Production is capped at 500, and the first 200 are sold before any is delivered.
2017
The Colombian, a Monaco GP and Indy 500 winner, sets the benchmark for a production car at Ehra-Lessien. The figure is announced at that year’s Frankfurt show.
2018
The new president reads up on the bodies of the 1920s and 1930s and asks whether the idea could work again. The answer sets a line of few-off cars that starts with the Divo.
Shown at Geneva, this track-minded version keeps the 1,500 PS and starts at €2.65 million.
Named after Targa Florio winner Albert Divo, this Chiron-based car is shown privately in spring and sells out within weeks, before its public debut at The Quail. It costs €5 million and only 40 are built.
2019
At Ehra-Lessien the Le Mans winner reaches 304.773 mph, or 490.484 km/h, in a modified pre-production longtail, with TÜV certifying the figure. Bugatti then builds 30 Super Sport 300+ for customers.
At Geneva Bugatti shows a black one-off sold for €11 million before tax. It recalls Jean Bugatti’s own Type 57 SC Atlantic, which vanished before the war and has never been found.
For the 110th anniversary, Geneva sees an electric copy of the Type 35 at three-quarter size, a modern take on the half-scale car Ettore and Jean built for young Roland in 1926. It is limited to 500.
Italian for 110, the name makes the homage plain. Revealed at The Quail, this ten-car series costs from €8 million, has 1,600 PS and is sold out before it is shown.
2020
Limited to 60 cars at €3 million, this version is tuned for agility, with a closer gear spread and a higher redline. The first delivery goes to a customer in the USA at the start of 2021.
What if the W16 got the smallest possible car around it? Revealed online, the concept weighs a claimed 1,240 kg, and Bugatti’s simulations put it ahead of the Le Mans lap record.
Twenty Chiron Sports recall the Bugatti drivers who were also pilots, such as Divo, Benoist and Costantini, with hand-sketched racing scenes on and in the cars.
A Croatian founder takes charge. The W16 bows out in the Chiron, Bolide and Mistral, and the Tourbillon opens a hybrid V16 chapter.
2021
With a longer tail and a 1,600 PS engine, it is built for top speed but keeps the comfort of a grand tourer. It is electronically limited to 440 km/h.
A Croatian start-up founder, ten years into his company, ends up running the marque. Rimac Group holds 55% of the new business and Porsche 45%, with production staying at Molsheim.
At The Quail, Bugatti says it will build the concept for customers: 40 track-only cars at about €4 million. The engineering work to make it a true Bugatti starts that same month.
The first car of the new programme is a Chiron Pur Sport wearing the number 32, from Louis Chiron and Achille Varzi’s win at the 1931 French Grand Prix, painted by hand.
2022
After 50,000 km of testing from -20 to +45 °C, delivery starts in the shade first seen on the EB110 and on the factory at Campogalliano. The owner of this car also has a matching EB110 GT.
The last European Chirons honour Ettore’s eldest child. He chose her name to hide his own initials in it, so that the “EB” would stay with her even after marriage.
The last of the record-inspired customer cars leaves in exposed carbon with Jet Orange accents, about 25 cm longer than a Chiron for stability at speed.
Named after the wind of southern France, the roadster debuts at The Quail. All 99 are already sold at €5 million each, and it draws on roadsters such as the Type 57 Grand Raid.
2023
With all build slots gone, the single car goes to RM Sotheby’s in Paris as the last new W16 Bugatti available from the Atelier. Bugatti calls it the most valuable new car ever sold at auction.
2024
A Super Sport repeats the two blues of the 2016 launch car, now fading into each other, and carries hand-written names of the places in the Chiron’s story, from Geneva to Ehra-Lessien.
Revealed at Molsheim, the Chiron’s successor pairs a naturally aspirated Cosworth V16 with electric motors for 1,800 PS. The name comes from a watchmaking mechanism, and Swiss watchmakers craft its analogue instrument cluster.
Andy Wallace sets a new record for an open-top car on the German oval, confirmed by SGS-TÜV Saar. That is about 34 km/h beyond the car’s 420 km/h top-speed setting, and the owner then rides along on a run almost as fast.
2025
The first of the new one-of-one commissions, a closed coupé on Mistral foundations, debuts at The Quail. It is named after Ettore’s favourite horse, a white and grey thoroughbred.
2026
Twenty years after the Veyron, the second Solitaire reuses its leaning-back posture on a 1,600 PS W16. Its initials are those of Ferdinand Karl Piëch, and some of its ideas date from designs he once put off.
The third Solitaire takes the track car’s carbon tub and removes the wings and vents, leaving a car just one metre tall. It is named after the strongest medieval knight’s horse.
Announced in April and completed by September, the deal ends Porsche’s holdings in Bugatti Rimac and Rimac Group. Mate Rimac adds the presidency of Bugatti Automobiles as Christophe Piochon steps down after more than two decades.
Production years of each road-car generation. Tap a bar to see its notable versions.
Type 10 · 13 · 15 · 17 · 22 · 23
Type 18
Type 30 · 38 · 40 · 43 · 44 · 49
Type 29 · 32 · 35 · 37 · 39
Type 41 Royale
Type 52 · 56
Type 46 · 50
Type 51 · 53 · 54 · 59
Type 55
Type 57
Type 64 · 68 · 73
Type 101
Type 251 · 252
EB110 & EB112
Concepts
Veyron
Chiron
Divo · La Voiture Noire · Centodieci
Bolide
W16 Mistral
Tourbillon
Programme Solitaire
Today’s daily has ten questions on these cars. Same for everyone, two minutes.