Vintage Snapshot: When Bugattis Were Just Old Cars
– Posted on February 5, 2019
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Today, that one on the right (it’s a Type 50-something, but I can’t narrow it down any closer) would go for $300,000.00.
The one on the left would probably bring about $50,000.00, seeing its not complete.
Then again, I can remember back to the summer of 1968 when I got a chance to drive that Dusenberg J phaeton. At the time, it was only worth about $10,000.00, and the owner drove it 200 miles to the car show.
I’d love to know what year that picture was taken in.
“Scrap drive for the war effort?”
“Sure take these two hunks of junk.”
“No they’re not for sale- I’m going to restore them one of these days.”
I know it’s popular to scorn this statement, but I’m certain these guys have had numerous tire kickers come on their properties with dollar signs in their eyes who think they discovered a gold mine, and feel entitled to procure their car offering as little compensation as possible.
“Hey, I’ll give you fifty bucks for that Bugatti”
Uhh, no. I’ll restore it one of these days.
“What a jerk! Damn hoarder!”
This same scenario has happened with almost every kind of car. The famous round door Rolls Royce that is displayed at the Petersen museum was found in an East coast scrapyard. I’ve read a lot of recent articles where owners have left their old cars in covered storage for over forty years before any restoration was done. Easier said than done. A lot of American Classics were scrapped during the WWII scrap drives.
You know you’re eccentric when you sit on a lawn chair inside your Bugatti’s engine bay and have a drink:
You have to love a car that gives you plenty of room to work under the hood.
Jay Leno once said he remembers seeing 30s and 40s cars in Demo Derbies when he was a kid in the 50’s and hated seeing them wrecked. Got him interested in collecting.
In the 80’s, I loved seeing 70’s tanks getting trashed, now, I cringe. But, like watching minivan, pickup, and/or SUV demo derbies on YouTube and go “yeah, crush ’em”
That’s the thing about demolition derbies, they occur at a point in time for the car where the worth is less as a car as it is in scrap. Back in the 1970s, if I remember correctly, ABC’s Wide World of Sports televised a luxury car demolition derby, with noted racers of the day and celebrity drivers. One car was a Rolls Royce, and all cars were fairly new and looked intact. My uncle remarked that the frame must have been bent on the Rolls, as nobody would believe that a “good” one would be sacrificed. I also recall someone posting about buying a 1958 Lincoln and making it a derby car recently. He claimed it was a Viking Funeral for the car, allowing it to die a fighting death. I kinda like that idea. The idea that all cars are worthy of full restoration is a pipe dream at best, and all things come to an end. It may not be my way of handling it, but more power to anyone doing what they want to do.
I remember watching that. I believe that in addition to the Rolls there was a late model Cadillac and Lincoln. I believe that those were publicity stunts for ratings and were surely underwritten by the network. I also remember that everyone in the derby went all Angry Mob on those three expensive cars and pounded them mercilessly until they were out, then things went back to normal.
I believe it was one of the Unsers driving the Rolls, too. Perhaps the locals at Islip were giving the beans to the interloping stranger…It seems to happen at local tracks, so no surprise there.
I have a picture of my dad and his younger brother, circa 1929, sitting in a Type 43 Grand Sport. It wasn’t my grandfather’s car and there are no notes as to whose it might have been. The irony in this is that my dad saw cars as appliances, something used to go from Point A to Point B, and otherwise had no interest in them.
My mom rode in a Bugatti on a visit to France in the early ‘50’s. I believe my older sister also rode along, in utero. I think that was the same trip where she was in a car accident riding in a Fiat Topolino. As the story was told and re-told over the years, the Topolino was just a slow, small car but the Bugatti was pretty special.
I believe that to date in my life I have knowingly seen more Bugattis in the flesh than I have Topolinos…Make of that what you will.
Somewhere we have a photo of what apparently is a random great-uncle or similar of mine that had a Bugatti. Never met the dude, and I’m assuming he sold the car before being able to claim that “he knows what he’s got.”
The only Topolinos I’ve ever seen in the metal had been modified by stuffing a first generation Chrysler Hemi into them and making them into Gassers. That was back in the early sixties when the NHRA pretty much took a “run what you brung” attitude and allowed as much experimentation as the builders were capable of. A Hemi powered Topo had to be an evil handling little beast but, on the other hand, the only turn they had to make was the one at the end of the strip heading back to the pits. It would be interesting to know if any unmodified Topolinos still exist in the U.S.
They’re Type 57’s. The one on the left (thanks to eric703’s picture) could possibly be a rare Atalante – note those low, faired-in headlamps and peaks along the top of the guards.
The drink is a Pastis, and apparently that brand came out in 1951, so the photo is at least after that. Judging by the high pants on a young-ish man, and the hair, I wouldn’t reckon the photo is any later than early ’60’s.
Were Bugattis ever really just old cars by the fifties? No doubt there’d have been some models looked down upon by the cognescenti – I recall reading that the Type 49 was once sneeringly referred to as “Bugatti’s Buick” – and there’s no doubt at all that quite a few may have sat as irrepairable pieces because of economic devastation flowing from WW2 for owners (and no parts). And no doubt they weren’t valued in the squillions then. But old cars, beaters, scrap? I reckon never.
An excellent and cheeky photo. Hell, why not put a chair in there – if it is an Atlante then the missing straight supercharged isn’t going to be found or paid for anytime soon.
An engineer acquaintance of my father’s had a very nicely equipped workshop and restored several Bugattis back in the sixties. If he couldn’t get a part he’d just machine one for himself. Not original, sure, but he certainly saved some from being scrapped. He used to annoy the neighbours tearing along the gravel road on the ‘private estate’ where he lived. Took me for a run once, but all I can remember is the noise!
Do you recall who that was, Pete?
I remember reading a brilliant Wheels magazine article in about ’84 concerning the last day of a garage about to be consumed by widening of some part of the Nepean Highway. A European specialist place, staffed by many from the Old Country(s), they had always lowered their hoist on a Friday afternoon, closed the doors, put a table on the hoist, with cloth, and ate a gorgeous Italian meal together. This occasion was the last time. My memory is that these old codgers were so skilled that they had collectively MADE a toolroom Bugatti T-35 at some point. (If I recall correctly, the car later caused a furore in Europe because someone tried to pass it off, but I digress). Surely, surely the guy you knew of must have been connected?
I’ll do my level best to try and locate that story. It would make a good CC post on it’s own.
That was John Porter, at Warrandyte. By ’84 he would have been well into his seventies.
Thanks, Pete. From memory, the article wasn’t suggesting they were any of them spring chickens even if ’84 was right, but it seems my ’84 date is wrong – seems more likely late ’70’s, but read by me later. Can’t locate it as yet.
I just love stories of unqualified, untrained engineers (in any country) who do this sort of stuff, especially as I have 100% of their enthusiasm combined with 10% of their knowledge – and 0% of their skills.
Yeah, I don’t recall reading that article, not in the eighties issues I have. If I’d read a story with John in it I’m sure I would have remembered.
Dad and John were partners in Brunswick Engineering, aka Wilding and Porter back in the fifties. http://musicolajukeboxes.com/
Oh! How brilliant is that link! Jukeboxes, who knew?
CC’ers, Pete’s dad made jukeboxes for a living (for a while, anyway). That can only be cool, surely.
Mr O. Pete – for the sake of argument, let’s call you, I dunno, Mr Wilding – you now MUST tell your dad’s story.
Even if you think it’d hardly amount to, I dunno, a decent sermon, there’s a lot of CC nerds – well, one, anyway – who’d love to hear the tale.
Please.
Okay, I’ll put together a story of sorts, though I’ll warn you, it doesn’t have a happy ending. That site (not mine, BTW) says a fair bit about the life of the company, way more that I ever knew. The guy who put it together found out a lot bit considering he’d never spoken to Dad or me. Unfortunately he died before he could speak with me, but the site lives on.
In addition to old cars being sold for scrap, my father says that when was young in the 1930s through the 1950s, it was common for the farmers where he used to live, to buy old cars, rip the bodies off of them and use them as farm tractors. Most of the cars were about 10 to 15 years old at the time and probably didn’t all that much life left in them. He says that he feels really bad about some of the great old Buicks and Chryslers that he remembers meeting such a fate. He also said that he remembers a Cord L29 being converted into a tractor, probably in the 1940s.
Bugatti! My interest in the marque goes back to Ken Purdy’s articles about them in Boys Life magazine, in the 60’s…
And speaking of Bugattis in junkyards, the Royale (one of SEVEN) that’s now in the Henry Ford was junked in the late 30’s-early 40’s, in New York . Someone didn’t put antifreeze in it and the block cracked! Luckily, GM engineer Charles Chayne rescued it, and later donated the car to the museum