OCTOBER 2019 | CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK 109
Natural light plays an equally crucial role in the manufacturing half
of the factory. Invisible when viewed in profile, full-height glass panels
stream light into the empty hall of a once-thriving production line. On the
other side of the same space, piles of aluminium swarf litter the floor of
the engine machining area. It’s tempting to pocket a few handfuls and try
your luck on eBay (‘Bugatti EB110 engine, needs slight attention’), but even
touching the stuff feels wrong, like you’re ransacking a grave.
Did Artioli have any similar doubts when he bought the thick wooden
door from Bugatti’s original Molsheim factory and transported it to
Modena to provide a link between the old and new eras? Surrounded by
the geometric lines of Campogalliano’s post-war architecture, it looks
incongruous, but touch the grain and you feel connected to the history.
At the edge of the path leading from the administration building to the
production building there’s a small post with a light on it. ‘When the red
light was on, that meant cars were being tested,’ explains Loris Bicocchi,
who was poached from Lamborghini to become Bugatti’s test driver. These
days he’s a roving chassis guru for hire and has helped shape the dynamics
of cars from Bugatti, Pagani and Koenigsegg.
‘It wasn’t a proper test track. We used to go to Nardo and the Nordschleife
for that,’ explains Bicocchi. ‘But it was useful for shaking cars down. One
time we did 50 laps just using first and second gear, trying to keep the revs
above 7000rpm to test the cooling system.’
I climb into a silver EB110 to get a taste of that madness. And this one
is a little madder than most, having been configured to compete in the
Daytona 24 Hours back in 1996. Stripped of the usual EB110 wood ’n’
leather luxury and about 200kg of kerbweight, the interior is dominated by
a thick rollcage, a bank of very ’60s-looking switches and an overwhelming
stench of fuel.
The clutch and steering feel massively heavy, but the H-pattern ⊲
It’s like the classic car barn-find
turned on its head: the find is
the barn, not the car inside
ThE ThREE AGEs Of BUG AT TI
1
In the beginning
‘Le Patron’ Ettore Bugatti is born in Italy but lives his life in
France. The company that bears his name opens in 1909, its
base a former dyeworks in Molsheim, Alsace. The elegant Grand
Prix cars and luxurious touring cars built there redefine the car
world’s parameters in every aspect.
2
The Italian sojourn
Following Ettore Bugatti’s death in 1947,
the company declines and ceases
production nine years later. Romano Artioli
buys the rights in 1987 and founds Bugatti
Automobili SpA. The EB110 is unveiled in 1991;
business ceases in 1995. Buying Lotus in the
middle probably doesn’t help. Artioli, now 86, is
pictured on the right.
3
V W ownership
Volkswagen AG acquires the brand and celebrates with
a series of concepts, including the EB18/4; it becomes the
Veyron, produced in the original, refurbished Molsheim base from
- Successive sledgehammer blows to the world’s fastest
production car record follow, but the future looks SUV-shaped.
wanted and rejected the proposal from the man responsible for the Coun-
tach, deciding the car should be redesigned by Giampaolo Benedini, the
man responsible for... the Bugatti factory.
If you’ve driven the A23 from Verona to Bologna in the last 30 years you’ll
have seen it. A huge expanse of glass, blue paint and fluted concrete, flags
flying proudly outside the main entrance. If you’d motored past in the early
’90s you’d have seen a striking red Bugatti logo on the side. But not today.
‘When Volkswagen bought Bugatti in 1998 they sent a team down here
to cover the bright red sign with blue foil,’ explains current Bugatti design
boss Achim Anscheidt. ‘But now it’s started to peel off. I love that it is
beginning to show itself again.’
A stunning example of post-war Italian industrial design, the Cam-
pogalliano factory is like the ultimate classic car barn-find turned on its
head, where the find is actually the barn and not the car inside. Unused
since Artioli’s Bugatti closed its doors in 1995, the plant is heavily decayed,
yet perfectly preserved, in part thanks to the efforts of three generations of
the same family who tended to the lawns when new, and still do.
The original foyer and reception desk with banks of cathode-ray moni-
tors and a tape-based hi-fi system, ideal for belting out Sade’s Diamond Life,
has survived intact. But apart for a few piles of ancient computers, pagers
and workers’ medical records (hope that boil has cleared up, Giuseppe), the
rest of the place is largely empty. Fortunately there are period photographs
displayed around the plant to show us how it looked.
Above the foyer, in the heavily glazed building that housed the showroom
and administration arm of the company, we see Artioli’s modest office and
the far more impressive circular space where dozens of draughtsmen, yet
to swap their drawing boards for computers, and identically kitted out in
white, monogrammed lab coats, made complicated calculations.
Inside Bugatti’s forgotten chapter
Famously
sharp president
Winkelmann
impervious
to heat
