GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
No other marque has produced heroes, triumphs and legends quite like those of Bugatti. Nor quite such a haunting, tragic, might-have-been figure as Ettore’s son
Jean Bugatti – a genius who passed far too soon
NO ONE COULD HAVE blamed the kid if he’d decided to be a doctor. Or an accountant. Or a lumberjack. Or anything else. Any son who follows in the professional footsteps of a superstar father, regardless of his personal success or failure, can never be totally free from the parent’s shadow, from whispers of ‘riding the old man’s coat tails’. Ettore Bugatti himself certainly didn’t try it. Born into an artistic Italian family of sculptors, painters, architects and artisans (younger brother Rembrandt wasn’t named by happenstance), he chose at an early age to make his own career in industry.
But Ettore showed no qualms about grooming eldest son Jean as his successor, nor did Jean appear to object. Of course, you could make the case that it was the only life Jean really knew. Christened as Gianoberto Carlo Rembrandt Ettore Bugatti upon his 1909 birth in Cologne, but known simply as ‘Jean’, he was uprooted with the entire clan less than a year later to the new Bugatti factory, homestead and private fiefdom at Molsheim. Jean grew up surrounded by Bugatti cars, employees, customers, racers, hangers-on; Bugatti horses, wines and hotels.
He officially entered the company as a teenager, starting – just like Dad had done – on the shop floor, learning to fashion metal with his hands. Also like Dad, he had no formal training whatsoever, let alone an engineering degree. Ettore scorned ‘intellectualism’ and believed technical education inhibited natural creativity, so his kids were essentially home-schooled. Maybe in Jean’s case that actually worked: he grew up with a good dose of Ettore’s mechanical imagination but none of his stubborn resistance to change. Think of them as Henry and Edsel Ford, had Ettore been a raving, sadistic bully instead of merely quirky and vainglorious.
As Jean’s role expanded, he gradually prodded his father toward new directions. Without Jean’s efforts it’s doubtful that Ettore would ever have consented to supercharging, pressurised oiling, hydraulic brakes, hemi-head combustion chambers (heavily ‘influenced by’, as it were, Harry Miller’s Indycars), or four-wheel drive experiments. Jean’s coachwork stylings were precious fresh air, too, straight from his earliest, such as the sweeping, laid-back windscreen shape of the 1932 Type 50 Coach Profilée, drawn at the ripe age of 23.
He was also test driver for both road and race machinery, and the 120mph luxury rail cars that Ettore flogged to utilise the unsold Royale engines. Legend says Jean took one through a station so fast that he blew out all the building’s windows. Like his wild midnight ‘road testing’, it was likely a substitute for the racing his father forbade him, although Jean was allowed some hillclimbs, most notably at Shelsley Walsh, where in 1932 he famously crashed – ironically, in the four-wheel-drive car.
By then, however, he was de facto head of factory operations. As the Depression deepened and French labour unrest simmered, Ettore spent increasingly longer periods in his Paris offices, ostensibly handling the rail-car business, while Jean watched Molsheim. The situation peaked in 1936, when striking workers downed tools and locked Ettore out; his patrician pride sorely wounded at such ingratitude by The Help, Ettore left the works for good. From ’36 Jean pretty much ran the show.
It was something of a mini golden age. Jean developed the Type 57 platform, already largely his work, with continual upgrades and a series of breathtaking bodies, culminating in some of the most covetable cars of all time, the Atlantic Coupés. A personable and patient young man, his relationship with the staff was of mutual respect; he had, after all, recently shared workbenches with many of them. Moreover, he listened and took action, and labour relations so improved that extended work hours were agreed in order to build the Le Mans entries. Under Jean, Bugatti won there in 1937 and 1939, the only wins in Bugatti history. The future was gradually looking brighter.
Until an evening in August ’39, when Jean finished dinner, told the family ‘I’ll be back in 15 minutes,’ and left in the latest Le Mans winner for a midnight road test. Despite the usual procedures to divert traffic, a cyclist entered Jean’s headlamps as he reached flat-out. Jean swerved in avoidance and died in the attempt, along with any real hope Automobiles Bugatti had against the horrors about to come. He was but 30 years old, and this time the whispers say, without exception, ‘If only…’
‘LEGEND SAYS JEAN TOOK A RAIL CAR THROUGH A STATION SO FAST THAT HE BLEW OUT ALL THE BUILDING’S WINDOWS’