Ettore Bugatti

Despite being born in Italy, Bugatti established his automobile company, Automobiles E. Bugatti, in 1909 in the then German town of Molsheim in the Alsace region of what is now France. The maker was known for some of the fastest, most luxurious, and technologically advanced road cars of its day. Exceptional engineering led to success in early Grand Prix motor racing, with a Bugatti being driven to victory in the first Monaco Grand Prix.

While displaced from his home in Alsace by World War I, Bugatti designed aeroplane engines, notably the somewhat baroque 16-cylinder U-16, which was never built in any large number and was installed in only a very few aircraft.^[7][8] Between the wars Bugatti designed a successful motorized railcar dubbed the Autorail Bugatti, and won a government contract to construct an airplane, the Model 100. It was designed by Louis de Monge using two type 50B Bugatti engines but never flew due to the outbreak of World War II. Surgical instruments, designed by Bugatti for a friend who was a professor at a nearby hospital, are still in use to this day.^[9]

Bugatti’s son, Jean, was killed on 11 August 1939 at the age of 30 while testing a Bugatti Type 57 tank-bodied race car near the Molsheim factory. After that, the company’s fortunes began to decline. World War II ruined the factory in Molsheim, and the company lost control of the property. During the war, Bugatti planned a new factory at Levallois in Paris and designed a series of new cars.

Bugatti’s concept of customer relations was somewhat eccentric. To a Bugatti owner who complained that his car was difficult to start on cold mornings, he is said to have retorted, “Sir! If you can afford a Type 35, you can surely afford a heated garage!”^[10] Another famous line he told to a customer complaining about the brakes in one model was, “I make my cars to go, not stop!”^[11] He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2000.^[12][13]