Expensive Failures: Bugatti EB110

Impressive as it was, the EB110 was done in by poor planning and bad timing.

You’ve really got to love the EB110, and your love for it should not be diminished by the fact that it was a flop. The fact is that there were several different factors which led to the downfall of this particular incarnation of Bugatti, but the quality of the car itself was never an issue. For the time, the car was a high-tech wonder, and produced performance figures which are still quite respectable 20 years later. But it still went under. Still, few marques in history carry with them the sort of gravitas that is associated with Bugatti.

After the company went bust following the difficulty of resuming operations after WWI and the death of Ettore Bugatti in 1947, there were several attempts to revive the brand. The first couple failed before even getting off the ground, and the company was absorbed by its own aircraft division, and then bigger aircraft companies during the Sixties. But in 1987, Romano Artioli attempted a full-on revival of the brand, complete with the sort of world-beating models that had made the brand what it was in the first place. The plans for the first car came in 1989, from designers Paulo Stanzani and Marcello Gandini.

You might recognize Gandini’s name from the article on the Cizeta V16T, or perhaps from his having designed the Lamborghini Miura, Countach and the original version of the Diablo. A new state-of-the-art factory was built in Campogalliano, Italy, to build the car, and if it isn’t already obvious, this was to be a much more Italian-influenced incarnation of Bugatti. But that’s fine, there are obviously plenty of amazing cars to come from Italy. And although he was a naturalized French citizen, Ettore Bugatti himself was born in Milan. The car adopted his initials EB and coupled them with the number 110 in reference to the 110th anniversary of Ettore’s birth.

Production would begin in 1991, and the completed product was a technological marvel. The body was built by Aerospatiale, a French airplane manufacturer, and was made of carbon fiber. There was a speed-sensitive raising rear wing as well as all-wheel-drive. Some have seen the scissor doors as a blatant Lamborghini rip-off, but the car was designed by the man who invented scissor doors, and could be argued to have more right to them than any post-Gandini Lambo. The engine was a 3.5-liter quad-turbo 12 which produced 553 horsepower. The later EB110 SS would push that figure to 603 horsepower while simultaneously coming in slightly lighter.

The EB110 could hit 62 mph in 4.2 seconds and a top speed of 213 mph, while the SS could do a 3.2-second 0-62 and a 216 mph top speed. We’re therefore talking about a pretty impressive car for 1991, so what went wrong? Well, there were a couple of problems. One was a recession that hit North America and Europe right at about the time the EB110 debuted. The $350,000 price tag (about $580,000 in today's money) was therefore not ideal. But the company was also sinking money into a sedan project - appropriately enough called the EB112, since it kicked off in 1993.Lastly, Artioli decided to buy up Lotus from GM to add to this expanding empire. But without EB110 sales able to keep pace with the money being spent on new development and acquisitions, Bugatti went bankrupt in 1995. In the end, just 139 units were produced, making the Veyron seem downright common by comparison. What Bugatti really needed, and ultimately got, was the backing of a huge automaker to help with development costs and keep market fluctuations from having such a devastating effect on its bottom line. The EB110 should have been a winning formula, but the timing just wasn’t right.

Bugatti Grand Sport Vitesse World Record Convertible leaked?

Rumored to have hit a top speed of 408.884 km/h (254.069 mph)

The first purported pictures of the Bugatti Grand Sport Vitesse World Record Convertible (WRC) have leaked to the web following a mysterious teaser earlier this morning.

While it's not the long-awaited "Super Bugatti," Liu Xu reportedly drove the model to a top speed of 408.884 km/h (254.069 mph) which makes it the world's fastest convertible.

Little else is known about the WRC, but the standard Grand Sport Vitesse has a quad-turbocharged 7.9-liter W16 engine that produces 1,200 HP (882 kW) and 1,500 Nm (1,106 lb-ft) of torque. It is connected to a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission which enables the model to accelerate from 0-100 km/h in 2.6 seconds and hit a top speed of 410 km/h (255 mph). This seemingly implies the WRC is just a special edition that celebrates the fact the Grand Sport Vitesse is now officially the world's fastest convertible.

We should learn more shortly as the car is expected to debut at the Shanghai Motor Show later this month.

Bugatti to Reveal Faster Veyron?

Bugatti indicates it's got a new trick up its sleeve. Could we be looking at an even faster version of the Veyron to reclaim the crown?

Yesterday we reported on Guinness revoking the "world’s fastest car" title from the Veyron Super Sport. Because the customer version is limited below the speed achieved in the record run, it didn’t qualify. But Bugatti isn’t about to take that lying down. The Alsatian marque posted a photo of a hangar door partially open and the caption "The stage is set. It’s almost time for us to share the latest example of exceptional Bugatti performance, simply keep a close eye on Facebook over the next few days."

That doesn’t really tell us much, but the speculation is that, with its title revoked, Bugatti is preparing to launch an even faster version of the Veyron – one which would eclipse the Super Sport and leave cars like the Hennessey Venom GT,Koenigsegg Agera R and SSC Ultimate Aero chocking on its exhaust. Rumors of a 1,600-horsepower Veyron (which we’ll call the "Super-Duper-Sport") have been floating around for years, dreaming of a Bugatti with a 1.8-second 0-60 time and a top speed as high as 290 mph. Just how much of that ends up being true remains to be seen, but with only a few days to go, we shouldn’t have to wait long.

Bugatti Grand Sport Vitesse WRC edition

Facebook teaser previews Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse land speed record breaking convertible

A special world-record edition of the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse convertible is expected to be revealed at the Shanghai Motor Show.

The car has been teased on the official Bugatti Facebook page with a picture showing an empty aircraft hanger, and the following message:

“The stage is set. It’s almost time for us to share the latest example of exceptional Bugatti performance, simply keep a close eye on Facebook over the next few days.”

A leak from a Chinese website claims the car is called the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse WRC limited edition, and will be painted in the same black and orange livery as the Veyron Vitesse that set an overall land-speed record for a production car back in 2010.

The Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse WRC limited edition has been built to break the Guinness world record for the fastest production open-topped car.

The site reports that the car, driven by Chinese man Liu Xu, hit an average top speed of 408.884kmh (254.069mph), most likely achieved at the VW Group’s Ehra-Lessien testing facility in Germany.

The test track was also the venue for Bugatti’s 431.072 kmh (267.856 mph) record top speed in the hard-top version of the car, driven by Bugatti test driver Henri Raphanel.

However, that record has since been withdrawn, as the car used for the record has its electronic speed limiter removed. The limiter is set to protect the car’s tyres, but as it was deactivated, the Veyron used was technically modified, and thus not eligible to set a production car record.

The world record convertible is based on the Grand Sport Vitesse that was unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in 2012. That car features a 1,184bhp version of the Veyron’s W16 engine and can sprint from 0-62mph in 2.6 seconds.

Bugatti claims that the Grand Sport Vitesse can hit a top speed of 255mph – almost exactly what the world record run on the Chinese website claims.

Bugatti Veyron Super Sport Stripped of Guinness World Record for Fastest Production Car

Because of a deactivated speed limiter

The Bugatti Veyron Super Sport has lost its title for the fastest production car in the world.

After an inquiry made by Driving.co.uk, Guinness World Records decided to strip Bugatti from this title after finding out the supercar used to achieve 267.8 mph (430.98 km/h) had been modified which means it did not comply with the rules. This decision was taken after detecting the record-breaking car had its top speed limiter deactivated. All 30 production cars sold came with the limiter activated at 258 mph (415 km/h).

As a consequence, the official title for the world's fastest production car will probably be going for the moment to the SSC Ultimate Aero which can do 255.83 mph (411.72 km/h). Chances are the Venom GT will soon grab the first place as during testing it managed to reach 265.7 mph (427.6 km/h) but the record is not official at the moment.

Maybe Bugatti will get their "revenge" with the rumored Veyron Super which will allegedly do 288 mph (463 km/h).

Sexualized Cars: Bugatti 57 Atlantic

Out of the ashes of the early 20th century came the Art Deco movement, a style of design that blended femininity with masculine machinery. The Bugatti Atlantic is one of the finest examples.

We covered the Bugatti Type 57 some time ago, but that was the Atalante Coupe, and for this article, the Atlantic is the more fitting form for the chassis. One of the rarest, most expensive and most exotic cars in the world, the Atlantic is also the perfect expression of Art Deco in automotive form. It comes from an era when sexuality was expressed, but only subtly. And although "subtle" isn’t a word often used to describe any Bugatti, there is a bit of that here.

The Type 57 was a chassis produced by Bugatti with a variety of different bodies from 1934 to 1940. Some of these were road cars and some were racing cars, and unlike most other car models, Bugatti would end up building more racing Type 57s than road-going versions. A total of 710 road-going units were built, with the lowered Type 57 S being the best known today, even though only 43 of the original cars were designated S. About 750 racing versions were built, with the best known being the 57 G Tank that won the 1937 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 57 S that won in 1939.

Just two 57 SC units were built by the factory. These were basically a 57 S with a supercharger, and nearly all of the 57 S customers brought their cars back to have the supercharger retrofitted. Today, most of the surviving 57 S units are referred to as 57 SCs whether the supercharger was original or not. The Atlantic body style was first conceived as a concept in 1935. The prototypes were built out of a material called Elektron, a magnesium-rich alloy. This material cannot be welded, as it would catch on fire, so the two halves of the body were riveted together on a ridge which ran along the top of the car.

The four production vehicles which would end up being made would be built using aluminum, but the ridge was still kept, simply because the designer the team at Bugatti had come to like liked the way it looked. The sexuality of the design is somewhat more complicated, and takes a certain amount of explaining. The years 1914 to 1918 had been absolutely horrific for Europe. The years of trench warfare during the First World War had had left a devastated landscape and had killed millions in the deadliest conflict ever seen at the time in Europe and one of the deadliest in the world.

But when this was immediately followed by the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, it must surely have seemed as though the world was ending. Spanish Flu killed an estimated 50-100 million people worldwide in the deadliest outbreak of disease the world has ever seen. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS did in 24 years, and more in one year than the Black Death killed in a century. Those who lived through this period of history came out with a profoundly changed perspective of the world. There was a big rise in counter-culture movements, especially in France and Germany, and the art world moved away from the Art Nouveau movement and into Art Deco.

Simply put, this movement took the natural themes of Art Nouveau and blended the more mechanical feel of the still new and intensely cruel Twentieth Century. These ideas would move into industrial and automotive design as well, and the Art Deco movement is the reason why the cars of the mid-Twenties and all the way through the Thirties would start to take forms that were decorative, rather than simply mechanical. This mix of the organic and mechanical gives the Atlantic its sweeping lines and gracious curves. Sexual themes were common in Art Deco, the natural result of this joining of the femininity of nature and the masculinity of machines.

There is no more perfect example of this than the Atlantic, with the mechanical underpinnings of a race car and a body which is truly a genuine work of art. Just two of the original four Atlantics produced survive today. One of these belongs to Ralph Lauren, which makes perfect sense, given the rest of the cars in his collection. The other recently sold for an undisclosed amount, estimated between $30-40 million. A product of its environment, the Atlantic is probably the most sexualized of all prewar cars.