Race in a road rally | The List #0035

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The List hosts Jessi Combs and Patrick McIntyre take part in The Great Race, a serious vintage-car road rally.

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Race in a road rally | The List #0035 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 22 Sep 2016 11:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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1937 Bugatti 57SC sells for record $9.7 million at Amelia

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Bonhams sold this 1937 Bugatti 57SC Sports Tourer with coachwork by Vanden Plas at Pebble Beach this past weekend for an impressive $9.7 million, making it one of the most valuable Bugattis ever sold at auction.

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1937 Bugatti 57SC sells for record $9.7 million at Amelia originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 14 Mar 2016 19:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Petrolicious turns a masterful lens on Bugatti specialists Garage Novo

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Petrolicoius has created one of its best videos ever with a look at Garage Novo, a French workshop that has specialized in restoring Bugattis for three generations.

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Petrolicious turns a masterful lens on Bugatti specialists Garage Novo originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 03 Jun 2015 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Art of Bugatti exhibit opens at Mullin Automotive Museum

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Art of Bugatti at the Mullin Automotive Museum

Southern California's wonderful jewel, the Mullin Automotive Museum, opened its latest exhibit this week and it is worthy of a road trip. Titled "The Art of Bugatti," the new show is an intimate look at more than a century's worth of Bugatti family creativity - automotive enthusiasts associate the name with cars, but the Italian-born, French-based Bugattis were accomplished sculptors, painters, furniture makers as well as car collectors. The work on exhibit in coastal Oxnard, about an hour northwest of Los Angeles, includes more than 40 automobiles (and an aircraft) from Ettore Bugatti, nearly two dozen pieces of sculpture from Rembrandt Bugatti and more than 40 pieces of furniture from Carlo Bugatti.

Peter Mullin, the museum's founder and chairman, owns the largest private collection of Bugattis in the world. This exhibit celebrates the achievements of the Bugatti family. "It was one of the rare artistic and artisanal families of the era. Everyone in the family just exuded huge artistic talent," said Mullin.

At an early private peek at the collection, our eyes were glazed over by the spectacular 1932 Bugatti Type 41 "Royale" Coupe de Ville, with a massive 12.7-liter straight-eight, and the 1927 Bugatti 35C race car, one of its most successful competitive models. The famed 1936 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic is also on display, which recently sold in the range of $30-40 million. One of the most unique items is the Bugatti 100P, a full scale reproduction of a V-tail wood twin-engine aircraft designed by Ettore Bugatti and Louis de Monge, built for the 1939 Deutsch de la Meurthe Cup Race (there are plans to fly it in the near future).

Tours of the museum are by advance reservation only, with both public and private viewings available. For more information, and dates, visit the the Mullin Automotive Museum online.

The Art of Bugatti exhibit opens at Mullin Automotive Museum originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 28 Mar 2014 14:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Topiary Joe sculpts the ultimate in green cars

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Porsche 356 Topiary

Efficient cars are all the rage these days, but Joe Kyte has made a business of crafting some of the coolest green cars around - literally. Kyte is better known by his nickname Topiary Joe, and in addition to being a talented artist, he is also a real gearhead.

Kyte has been creating topiaries for the last 20 years. It began when he was marketing greenhouse products to Walt Disney World and saw their plant sculptures. He realized that he could do that and since then, has done around 3,400 pieces.

His most intriguing creations are the rolling sculptures that move and turn. Prices for those start at about $18,000 and can be as high as $30,000. While, the wheels are machine-bent, Kyte said all the other parts are done with a table vice and a Lincoln Electric arc welder. Topiary Joe is taking the Porsche (pictured above) to Palm Beach later this year to sell or says he may donate it to Porsche North America. If you really want it, the sculpture is currently on Craigslist for sale for $24,000.

Topiary Joe has also had a life-long love of cars. "I was driving my first MG Midget before I was 14," he told Autoblog. He grew up in Oak Ridge, TN, where the Manhattan Project was partially developed. He says the town was full of recent college grads driving Mercedes, and he caught the bug. His automotive mentor was a nuclear physicist who taught him to repair and restore the Mercs.

Kyte has completed commissions for Sandals Resort, Dreamworks, Absolut, and many more. Among his favorite creations is the Ferrari that he created at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that is now exhibited at the airport each year before the race. Check out his website for a wider look at his work.

Topiary Joe sculpts the ultimate in green cars originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 15 Mar 2014 17:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bugatti 100P airplane reconstructed, will fly again after public debut

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Bugatti 100P plane

Bugatti has been building some of the fastest vehicles in the world since 1909, but its brief history with airplane racing is less well known to many fans. It started in the '30s when founder Ettore Bugatti believed he could build a plane to win the Deutsch de la Merthe Cup Race. He worked on a design called the 100P that never flew. At least, it never flew until a group of Bugatti fanatics called Le Reve Blue decided to build an exact replica of the plane at the Mullin Automotive Museum's Art of Bugatti exhibition. The plane will make its public debut on March 25 in Oxnard, California.

The 100P was on the cutting edge for 1930s aircraft. It used two Bugatti-built 4.9-liter, straight-eight engines with 450 horsepower each to power two counter-rotating props mounted in tandem at the front of the plane. It boasts an estimated top speed of around 500 miles per hour. Other amazing features for the time included the V-shaped tail, forward-pitched wings and a zero-drag cooling system.

Le Reve Blue took on the project in 2009 to create a replica using the same materials and production processes as the original. The group decided to unveil the finished project at the Mullin because of the museum's commitment to Art Deco and machine-age design. It plans to actually fly the plane at some point in the future as well.

In addition to the 100P, the Art of Bugatti exhibition promises "among the largest assembled collection of Bugatti artifacts and automobiles." Scroll down to read the full details on the 100P replica.

Continue reading Bugatti 100P airplane reconstructed, will fly again after public debut

Bugatti 100P airplane reconstructed, will fly again after public debut originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 15 Feb 2014 10:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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2013 Monterey Motorsports Reunion

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2013 Monterey Motorsports Reunion

The entry list for all of the events in this year's Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion totaled 15 single-spaced pages long. That's explains how the field for this past weekend's Trans-Am race contained 41 cars, which is a larger field than ever competed in a real Trans-Am race.

The hero car in the photo above is a 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport driven by Bruce Canepa, who won the Group 5A event for 1963-1966 GT Cars over 2500cc. Also on track throughout the day were pre-war racers like a 1932 MG NE and other two-up English entries, the original Morgan 3 Wheeler, sky blue single-seat French competitors like a 1934 Bugatti Type 59, and the high-driving red devils from Alfa Romeo and Maserati. Post-war treats include a BMW M1, Ferrari 250 GTO SWB, and bulbous, Speed Racer-looking Can-Am monsters.

Click on our huge high-res gallery above and enjoy a leisurely stroll back through time.

2013 Monterey Motorsports Reunion originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 19 Aug 2013 13:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Man rolls $400,000 vintage Bugatti in race, goes for a pint

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One of the risks associated with vintage car racing is damaging a rare, priceless piece of automotive history, but we're pretty sure that one recent participant is just happy to be alive. Edmund Burgess, of Lavenham, UK, was participating in the Prescott Speed Hill Climb in Gloucestershire, UK when, according to Car Buzz, the brakes reportedly failed on his 1924 Bugatti Type 13 causing it to go off course and roll over.

With an open cockpit on the car, all that was protecting Burgess were a helmet, goggles and a jacket, and while the video shows that his head came very close to making contact with the wall and ground, and that he was briefly trapped under the car, he fortunately didn't suffer any serious injuries.

Too bad the same can't be said for the Bugatti. The vintage racer, worth an estimated 250,000 British pounds (about $390,000 US), was heavily damaged, but the report says that Burgess is determined to get it fixed and racing again in just eight weeks. So what does a racer do after crashing his rare sports car and live to race another day? Probably the same thing we'd all do. Grab a beer. The video of the crash is posted below.

Continue reading Man rolls $400,000 vintage Bugatti in race, goes for a pint

Man rolls $400,000 vintage Bugatti in race, goes for a pint originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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2013 Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este dominated by Ralph Lauren’s Bugatti [w/video]

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On this past long weekend while Americans were celebrating Memorial Day, the very American Ralph Lauren was cleaning up tidily at this year's Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este in northern Italy on the western shore of Lake Como. It rained the first day on and off and this lowered a little the spirits of the event, but Sunday was a knockout Day Two and, at any rate, nothing put the kibosh on Lauren's 1938 Bugatti winning nearly everything there was to win.

Nothing put the kibosh on Lauren's 1938 Bugatti winning nearly everything there was to win.

Here's the hardware the clothing magnate's $40-million-value Bugatti 57SC Atlantic hauled in: Trofeo BMW Group (this is a BMW Group-sponsored event since 1999) for best in show according to the Jury; Coppa d'Oro Villa d'Este for best in show according to the invited public and press; Trofeo BMW Group Italia for best in show according to the open public on Day Two; Trofeo BMW Group Ragazzi for best in show according to the younguns; best-in-class winner of Class B a.k.a. "Purosangue"; Trofeo Auto & Design special prize for most exciting design according to the Jury.

So, hats off to Mr. Lauren's sultry black French win-mobile. There are nine classes overall and besides the mondo Bugatti in Class B, the other eight were: a 1928 Mercedes-Benz 680S torpedo roadster (Class A "Gentlefolk of the Road"); 1964 Ferrari 500 Superfast berlinetta (Class C "Time of Change"); 1962 Aston Martin DB4 SS saloon (Class D "Aston Martin" for the company centenary); 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB berlinetta (Class E "Cavallino contro Tridente" for Ferrari vs. Maserati); 1956 Jaguar XKSS spider (Class F "California Dreaming"); 1964 Ferrari 250 LM berlinetta (Class G "Style and Speed"); 1965 Lamborghini 350 GTS spider (Class H "Lamborghini" for the company 50th anniversary); 1965 Ferrari Dino 166P/206P spider (Class I "Racing Improves the Breed").

Continue reading 2013 Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este dominated by Ralph Lauren's Bugatti [w/video]

2013 Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este dominated by Ralph Lauren's Bugatti [w/video] originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 31 May 2013 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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1939 Bugatti Type 64 Coupe is incomplete perfection

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Bugatti Type 64 Coupe

In 1939, Jean Bugatti was hard at work on the Type 64 Coupe. A total of three examples were started, but only one received completed bodywork before the designer's death during a Type 57 road test. Now the Mullin Automotive Museum is out to finish what Bugatti started all those years ago. Using many of the same coachbuilding techniques employed by the French automaker in the late '30s, the museum has all but finished constructing the body.

Naked of paint and lounging under the California sun, the Type 64 looks as if it has just rolled out of our ancestors' vision for the future. Its papillion doors and dramatic, reaching front fenders are as elegant now as they were when Bugatti first sketched them 73 years ago. Take a closer look for yourself by clicking through the photo gallery.

And if you missed the Quail Motorsports Gathering, don't sweat it. The Mullin Automotive Museum plans to display the car at its Oxnard, California facility starting this fall.

1939 Bugatti Type 64 Coupe is incomplete perfection originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 18 Aug 2012 19:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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