Redirected from Ettore Bugatti
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Only a few models of each of Ettore Bugatti's vehicles were ever produced, the most famous being the Type 35 Grand Prix car, the huge "Royale[?]", and the Type 55 sports car.
Bugatti also designed a successful motorized railcar, the Autorail, and an airplane, but it never flew.
Ettore Bugatti died on August 21, 1947 and is buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery , Paris, France.
In 1987 the Bugatti name was sold to Romano Artioli, an Italian entrepreneur. He commissioned a car that was to become the world's fastest, the Bugatti EB110 (so named to honour the 110th anniversary of Ettore Bugatti's birth).
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The completed car was ready in 1990 but the unveiling was delayed until the anniversary date of September 15, 1991. The car had a quad turbo V12 3500cc engine of 611bhp, powering all four wheels through a six speed gear box, and was capable of 212 mph.
At a price of £340,000 it wasn't going to be anything but exclusive. Built using carbon fibre, five aluminium chassis pre-production prototypes were built, followed by eight with composite chassis, before ninety-five production models were rolled out.
Bugatti purchased Lotus Cars from General Motors in 1993. A luxury saloon (EB112) was planned, but never got beyond the prototype stage. The company went bankrupt in 1995.
In 1998 the Bugatti name was bought by VAG, but by mid-2002 only a handful of prototypes had been produced.
Today Bugatti cars are amongst the most sought after in the world by collectors, fetching prices as high as US$10 million.
The best-known collectors of Bugatti were Hans and Fritz Schlumpf, two brothers who ran a textiles business in Mulhouse[?], close to the Bugatti factory. Between 1958 and 1975 (when their business failed) they secretly amassed a remarkable collection of the cars. Now known as the Schlumpf Collection[?], it has been turned into one of the world's great car museums, the Musée Nationale de l'Automobile.
See also: List of automobiles.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump