Breathtaking 1935 Bugatti Aerolithe recreated from a handful of photos
1935 Aerolithe concept recreated from scratch
The Bugatti Aerolithe project is finally finished — well, almost. I think I wrote my first column about building a Bugatti T 57104 chassis with Aerolithe-style magnesium coachwork in 2005 or 2006 and the project has been blasting along ever since.
The project was to recreate the famous Bugatti coachwork created for the Paris Autoshow in 1935 and place it on an original Type 57 Bugatti chassis with matching engine, transmission and rear axle. The original car, called the Aerolithe (translates into sky stone or meteorite), was mysteriously lost not long after its appearance in London in 1936. It was likely broken up by the factory in the pursuit of spare parts or sent to scrap during the war by the Germans, but not a trace of it has ever been found.
My fascination with the car began in the late 1990s when I purchased a large number of original Bugatti parts for a client, most of them Grand Prix car bits and pieces, but along with those were the original and virtually complete chassis and parts for a standard Type 57.
I tinkered with the idea of building several different styles of car on this chassis. The one that kept coming back to mind was the fabulous Jean Bugatti-designed Aerolithe. It was the prototype for three Bugatti Atlantics, and influenced coach builders around the world.
I had several people wanting to sponsor the Aerolithe build, among them Nicolas Cage.
One gentleman did step up, who really understood the importance of recreating the car exactly as it would have been built in 1935. I cannot name him, but he has remained steadfast throughout the whole exhausting and troublesome process and never advocated cutting corners.
Only 11 useful photographs of the car existed, although we came across two more during the course of the build. None show the interior in any detail and none show the car with an open hood, although you can see parts of the engine through the cooling screens in the hood sides. We had to build the car to be absolutely accurate to the methods and materials that would have been used on the original, which meant exhaustive research into every kind of fastener, clip, nut, bolt and screw that was going into the car.
Over the build, we have amassed a huge amount of engineering detail and we are pretty sure we know exactly how the original car was built and on what kind of chassis.
Small problems niggled almost constantly and the magnesium we used to create its wonderful contours was always willing to give us a hard time.
A real irritation was parts we sent out for nickel plating were often ruined by the Canadian plating company we contracted. In the end, we had to send all the parts to the U.S. to have them redone properly.
As the original Aerolithe was claimed by Bugatti to be built from electron, a magnesium alloy, and the press of the day christened it the Electron Coupe, it was decided early on to build the body from that material. While not a mistake, it certainly was a challenge. Magnesium is a temperamental and unforgiving material to use and it often frustrated us from the beginning. Over the years, however, we have almost tamed it.
We recently finally called the project finished and it was to debut as the feature car at the Concours d’Elegance in Kuwait City — since postponed until 2014. There’s no end to prestigious shows that would like to see the car on their display, but for now, until its official coming-out is decided, it lives with me.