Type 57 engine

Bugatti 5 Litres Roland
Garros ‘Black Bess’
Bugatti 50 T
Bugatti 57 S
Bugatti 41 Royale
The name Ettore Bugatti is immortal in motoring history. He had an extraordinary personality and his creations were highly original. He had a unique understanding of how to infuse art into a product that until then had lacked almost any artistic merit, expressing it itself only in the brute force of its engine. Ettore Bugatti’s motto was , ‘Un’opera tecnica non può essure perfetta se non è perfetta dal punto di vista estetico’. (A piece of engineering cannot be perfect if it is not perfect from the aesthetic view-point.)

He was born in Milan on September 15, 1881 and died in the American hospital at Neuilly near paris on August 21, 1947. He retained his Italian citizenship despite spending a large part of his life at Molsheim in Alsace where the Bugatti factory was situated. The make itself had, on the other hand, always been regarded as French although Molshiem was in fact German territory until 1918. In 1898 at age of 18 he became a regular apprentice with Prinetti & Stucchi, after having designed a tricycle for them in 1895. In 1900, under the patronage of Count Gulinelli, he designed and built a proper 4-wheeler. This was unveiled at the first international exhibition of cars at Malan winning the prize offered by the city council for the best Italian design for a car. This car excited the interest of the French firm De Dietrich who wanted to buy it form Ettore Bugatti as well as offering him a job as their technical director. Bugatti accepted and he remained with De Dietrich until 1904. He collaborated briefly with Mathis and then he sold another of his designs to Deutz of Cologne of which he was also technical director.