106 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK | OCTOBER 2019
orty degrees and rising. It’s so hot inside
Bugatti’s disused Campogalliano factory
the paint would be peeling off the walls – if
there was much left to peel. But in breezes
Stephan Winkelmann as if he has his own
personal breeze to keep him cool. Trade-
mark pinstripe suit, jacket fastened, collars
buttoned down. Not a hair out of place or a
single bead of sweat on the brow. Presuma-
bly the suit’s one of those motorsport ones with coolant pumped around it.
Or maybe he’s looking so cool because this is familiar turf. Nearly. Born
in Berlin but raised in Rome, Winkelmann spent 11 years as boss of Lam-
borghini just a handful of miles away in Sant’Agata. Now he heads Bugatti,
after a short stint as boss of Audi Sport. ‘I was sad to leave Lamborghini, but
not Audi,’ he admits. So was a move to Bugatti always part of the plan?
‘My plan?’ he smiles. ‘I hoped I would be in this job eventually, but you
never know where you’re going. You just get the call.’
But though Winkelmann is too modest to admit it, it’s down to him that
we’re here today in the old EB110 factory, talking about the rehabilitation of
a car VW-era Bugatti policy and the omnipresent legend of the McLaren F1
had attempted to airbrush from history. And talking about a new Bugatti
inspired by the EB110. We’ll get to it soon enough, but to understand it, we
need to understand the inspiration. Pass me my mortar board (it’ll make a
handy fan).
The Bugatti brand is 110 years old this year, but as far as most modern
fans are concerned it hasn’t even hit 20. VW bought the rights to the Bugatti
name in 1998 and launched the Veyron onto Planet Earth’s unsuspecting
tarmac seven years later. Until recently, if it ever referenced the Bugattis
that had gone before it was usually the Type 35 Grand Prix car.
Never mentioned was the period in the early ’90s when Bugatti built
the fastest car in the world, was all over the covers of motoring magazines
and in the garages of celebrity owners like a young, but already famous,
Michael Schumacher.
‘I think there was a sense within the VW Group that that period didn’t fit
with the narrative, that it confused the story, so it was just easier not to talk
about it,’ explains Winkelmann.
‘The original Bugattis were built in Molsheim [in France], just like the
new ones. So the idea that Bugatti was once owned by an Italian and build-
ing cars in Italy was a strange tangent.’
The Italian gent in question was Romano Artioli, who bought the
Bugatti brand in 1987 and set about resurrecting a brand that, apart from
a stillborn concept by ex-Chrysler stylist Virgil Exner in the ’60s, had been
dormant since the early ’50s – and presumed to be a lost cause ever since
founder Ettore Bugatti became ill and died in 1947.
Artioli assembled a crack team of established supercar and motorsport
engineers, many from Lamborghini, locating his new business close to
Modena, the heart of supercar valley. The team included Paolo Stanzani
of Miura fame, and later Mauro Forghieri, who’d dreamed up several F1
winners for Ferrari. One of the first hires was a young Maserati engineer by
the name of Maurizio Reggiani, now head of R&D at Lamborghini.
On his first day, Reggiani asked Stanzani where he should start. ‘Start
where you want,’ replied Stanzani. ‘We don’t have anything.’
But by 1991 they did have something: they had a four-wheel-drive,
V12-powered supercar, the kind of car Jaguar, and its XJ220 concept, had
promised, but would fail to deliver. Artioli, meanwhile, felt that legendary
designer Marcello Gandini had failed to deliver the kind of supercar he ⊲
‘Original Bugattis
were built in
Molsheim, just like
the new ones. So
the idea that it once
built cars in Italy is a
strange tangent’
STEPHAN WINKELMANN
F
Architect
Benedini
shaped both
Bugatti’s factory
and the EB110
Inside Bugatti’s forgotten chapter
Swarf
remains from
machining the
EB110’s V12s
