Ettore Bugatti’s engines achieve world speed records for cars, boats, trains and aircrafts and Bugatti Type 35 ended up being the most effective racing car in history, moving the Bugatti name to revered public recognition. Now his automobiles are doing it all over once again on the auction block and the baby of the fleet is carrying it beyond expectations.
In the years from WW1 and WW2, Ettore Bugatti showcased world’s best practice in everything he did. Bugatti’s cars were not only for racers. They were likewise the most insanely proportioned and sumptuous for the rich and popular.
The Bugatti Royale Berline de Voyager achieved a world record of $6.5 million in 1986 and another Bugatti Royale (the Kellner Coupe) surpassed that record in 1987 with a sale of $9.9 million, then incredibly held the world record cost for a car at auction from 1987 until 2010.
The Type 35 was victorous in the 1926 Grand Prix World Championship and the Targa Florio for five successive years (1925-1929). In the hands of racers throughout the world, the production Type 35 racing cars and truck averaged 14 race wins every week at its peak, ultimately winning over 1,000 races.
In the midst of this, Ettore Bugatti made the effort to style and develop a reproduction T35 child’s car for his second kid Roland who was born in 1922 and got the vehicle for his fourth birthday.
That’s Ettore’s first kid, Jean Bugatti, above in a T35 and second kid Roland in the baby Bugatti. The response to the small electric car at the company headquarters in Molsheim was so overwhelmingly favorable that the choice was made to offer the car to the public, with the Bugatti Bebe debuting at the 1927 Milan Automobile Show.
The small 150 pound electric vehicle was 6 feet in length and had a top speed 12 miles per hour. The Bebe’s pneumatic tires ran on removable alloy wheels and the automobile was fantastically made with four-wheel brakes and elaborate suspension. That’s the car that soldin Paris on February 10, 2017 for $99,000 above. Around 500 units were produced between 1927 and 1937 and 100 remain intact in the hands of owners and museums. Two are exhibited at the Cité de l’Automobile– Musée National– Collection Schlumpf in Mulhouse, France.
