Skip to content

Bugatti Type 35

Reverence

The early Bugatti, those before Artioli and Volkswagen, fill me with awe. To be honest, I don’t really know much about them either. And that, although a Bugatti Type 35 would be one of my top three choices if my postage account were really full. Of course, there are more valuable and more powerful Bugattis, but for me the Type 35 is the epitome of the pre-war racing car, visually at least. And no, it didn’t get much better later on.

The Type 35 was launched in mid-1924, with a 2-litre inline eight-cylinder engine, about 95 hp, 750 kilos. There was also the Type 35C, with the same engine but with a compressor, which produced 125 hp; the Type 35T (for the Targa Florio), 2.3-litre displacement, 105 hp; and the Type 35B (or TC), 2.3-litre displacement, compressor, 140 hp. Probably 337 were built, of which 148 are said to still exist. The problem is: it’s complicated. Because almost all of these Bugattis were used as racing cars, something broke at some point in their 100-year history. Or a lot. Or everything.

And that’s why it’s so difficult today to determine the originality of the respective vehicles. We don’t presume to do so, but we’ve probably never seen as many contradictions in the individual vehicles as in these French cars. Of course there are (partly good) books, and specialists, but they don’t give each other the time of day. And there will always be someone who ‘embellishes’ the corresponding copy if it helps their ‘interests’. We will not judge here, but merely attempt to tell some nice stories (‘se non è vero, è bon trovato’…) and show good pictures. Some of the individual vehicles will have their own story, but for others, only a short version is available here.

VIN: 4947

More about this vehicle can be found here.

More exciting vehicles can be found in our archives.

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *