Cars & Motorbikes Stars of the Golden eraSeguir
Jean Bugatti with his Bugatti Royale ‘Esders’ Roadster, 1932.
Sold in April 1932 to French clothing manufacturer Armand Esders.
Ettore's eldest son, Jean, fashioned for the car a dramatic two-seater open body with flamboyant, full-bodied wings and a dickey seat, but no headlamps. In this form it became known as the Royale Esders Roadster.
Ettore's eldest son, Jean, fashioned for the car a dramatic two-seater open body with flamboyant, full-bodied wings and a dickey seat, but no headlamps. In this form it became known as the Royale Esders Roadster.
Purchased by the French politician Paternotre, the car was rebodied in the Coupé de ville style by the coach builder Henri Binder. From this point onwards, known as the Coupé de ville Binder
Briefly located in the United Kingdom after World War 2, and was then acquired by Dudley C. Wilson of the US in 1954.
Dudley Wilson was a sports car racer, and in 1948, won at Langhorne. This Philadelphia track was created in 1926, as the 1st dirt track built specifically for car racing.
On his death in 1961 it passed to banker Mills B Lane of Atlanta for $4500 before in 1964 taking up residence in The Harrah Collection at Reno, Nevada, bought at the then sensational price of $45,000 (approximately what the car had cost new).
Sold in 1986 to an American collector, home builder, and US Air Force General William Lyon, who offered the car during the 1996 Barrett-Jackson Auction by private sale, where he refused an offer of US$11 million; the reserve was set at US$15 million.
In 1999, the new owner of the Bugatti brand, Volkswagen AG, bought the car for a reported US$20 million. Now used as a brand promotion vehicle, it travels to various museums and locations
JEAN BUGATTI : (15 January 1909 – 11 August 1939) was a French automotive designer and test engineer.
Cause of deathCar accidentResting placeDorlisheim, France Nationalitygerman Citizenship german, french Occupation Engineer, car designer and test driverYears active1926-1939Parent(s)
Cause of deathCar accidentResting placeDorlisheim, France Nationalitygerman Citizenship german, french Occupation Engineer, car designer and test driverYears active1926-1939Parent(s)
Born Gianoberto Maria Carlo Bugatti in Cologne, he was the eldest son of Ettore Bugatti. Soon after his birth the family moved to the village of Dorlisheim near Molsheim in Alsace, Germany, where his father built the new Bugatti automobile manufacturing plant. Born into a family of creative people, from boyhood he was interested in his father's business. His grandfather Carlo Bugatti had lived in France for several years when he relocated from his native Milan to live in Paris. The Bugatti family were multilingual and in France, Gianoberto became known as Jean.
During World War I, the family lived in Milan, Italy. After the ceding of Alsace by Germany to France after the end of the war in 1919, the company became subject to French jurisdiction. By the late 1920s, young Jean Bugatti was an integral part of the company and had already demonstrated his vehicle design abilities. In 1932, at the age of twenty-three years, he did most of the design for the company's Type 41 Royale. His body designs complemented his father's engineering skill, making Bugatti one of the greatest names in automobile manufacturing. Additionally, Jean Bugatti designed four bodies for the Type 57, the Ventoux, Stelvio, Atalante and Atlantic models. Regarded as the finest of all the Bugatti touring models, the supercharged Bugatti 57 was debuted at the 1936 Paris Salon. Jean Bugatti also showed his engineering skills by working on new independent suspension systems to replace solid front axles and twin-cam engine applications.
He frequently tested the company's prototypes. On 11 August 1939, while testing the Type 57 tank-bodied racer which had just won the 24 Hours of Le Mans race that year, not far from the factory on the road near the village of Duppigheim, 30-year-old Jean Bugatti was killed when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a tree after hitting a cyclist, who had got onto the track through a hole in a treefence. He is interred in the Bugatti family plot at the municipal cemetery in Dorlisheim. There is a monument to him at the site of his accident.
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