THAT COULDN’T

Bugatti is most often associated with the name “bolide” – fast, sleek and powerful cars – but, unbeknownst to many, the company also has a history in aviation; producing powerful aircraft engines and a unique, highly advanced (for the time) one-of-a-kind, yet ultimately doomed, aeroplane: the Model 100P.

When WWI broke out, Bugatti designed 186 kW straight-eight and 336 kW double straight-eight (U-16) aircraft engines for the French government. While impressive, they were not used on a large scale, though the US Bolling Commission later acquired licensing rights and planned to build up to 5,000 of them. By the time the war ended, however, only about 40 had been produced.

Later, Ettore Bugatti, based on his company’s unbelievable motor racing success following WWI, decided to build a plane to take on the Germans in the 1939 Deutsche de La Muerthe Cup Race. He hired Louis de Monge to design the airframe for his concept, which was originally for a singleengine aircraft.

The design was later changed, though, to accommodate two modified Bugatti model 50B engines, driving two contra-rotating propellers through drive shafts, and, in 1938, construction of the unusual aircraft started on the second floor of a furniture factory in Paris.

The Model 100P needed to be completed by September 1939, but with the threat of war ever increasing, the deadline was not met and the sleek, futuristic craft – the source of five modern patents, including its inline engines, V-tail mixer controls and automatic flap system – never took to the air.

The French government, aware of the advanced design of the plane, contracted Bugatti to build a light fighter version, designated Model 110P, but in 1940, with German forces closing in on Paris (and apparently aware of its existence), the uncompleted craft was moved to the countryside and hidden in a barn.

There it remained for nearly 30 years before being sold numerous times and finally donated – sans engines – to the EAA Aviation Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1996.

While the original aircraft never flew, the design finally did.

Ardent American pilot and aircraft builder, Scotty Wilson, and his team spent seven years recreating the 100P, and it finally had its first flight on 19th August 2015. Seemingly doomed to remain grounded, however, the plane was destroyed in a crash on its third flight, and Wilson was tragically killed.