1934 Bugatti Type 57 Sports Saloon

By the early 1930s Ettore Bugatti had established an unrivalled reputation for building cars with outstanding performance on road or track; the world’s greatest racing drivers enjoying countless successes aboard the Molsheim factory’s products and often choosing them for their everyday transport. Although Bugatti is best remembered for its racing models, most of the 6,000-or-so cars produced at the Molsheim factory were touring cars of sporting character. Produced from 1934 to 1940, the Type 57 exemplified Bugatti’s policy of building fast and exciting touring cars possessing excellent handling and brakes. The Type 57 was powered by a twin-cam engine derived from that of the Type 51 Grand Prix car, and was the firm’s most popular model.

Because of its lengthy run of success, Ettore Bugatti had remained stubbornly committed to his single-cam engine, only adopting the more advanced double-overhead-camshaft method of valve actuation, after much prompting by his eldest son Jean, on the Type 50 of 1930. From then on Jean Bugatti took greater responsibility for design, his first car being the exquisite Type 55 roadster, a model ranking among the finest sports cars of the 1930s. He followed that with a design of equal stature, the Type 57. A larger car than the Type 55, the Type 57 was powered by a 3.3-litre, double-overhead-camshaft straight eight of modern design housed in Bugatti's familiar vintage-style chassis. The range showed the strong influence of Jean Bugatti and at last gave the marque a civilised grande routière to match those of rivals Delage and Delahaye.

The Type 57 attracted coachwork of the finest quality executed in a startling variety of styles but was no mere rich man's plaything, as evidenced by two outright wins at Le Mans. Proof, if it were needed, that ancestral virtues had not been abandoned when creating a car fit to rank alongside Rolls-Royce or Bentley. Its success is revealed by the production figures: some 630 examples of all Type 57 models were produced between 1934 and 1940, and the post-war Type 101 was based on its chassis. However, although many Type 57s were fitted with bespoke bodies, the most popular coachwork was built to Jean Bugatti’s designs by the marque’s preferred carrossier, Gangloff of Colmar, just a few miles from the Bugatti works at Molsheim.

This Bugatti Type 57 sports saloon, chassis number ‘57158’, was built for the 1934 London Motor Show and exhibited on the stand of coachbuilder, James Young. One of the handful of British firms that would resume coachbuilding after WW2, the Bromley-based carriage-maker had bodied its first automobile in 1908, affiliating itself with a succession of quality marques throughout the 1920s and 1930s before being acquired by the Jack Barclay group in 1937. Of the approximately 630 Type 57s made, James Young was responsible for bodying 12, only two of which were two-door models like this one. Reflecting the contemporary interest in streamlining, James Young’s coachwork is beautifully proportioned and must surely be one of the most successful British-built bodies on the Type 57 chassis.

Descriptions & pictures by bonhams & coachbuild & wikimedia & en.wheelsage & other