Up close with the £12million, one-off Bugatti La Voiture Noire
Since I was young, I’ve always had a fascination for concept cars. With bold styling and a stance that is often accompanied by enormous wheels, I’ve always felt that they were the closest we could get to a designer’s true ideas before engineers bring them back to reality for production.
But in the case of the unique Bugatti La Voiture Noire, this compromise wasn’t as extreme. A project built around the existing Chiron chassis, the goal was to appropriate one of the most legendary Bugatti’s - the Type 57 Atlantic, for the modern times as a fully functional machine. Although it’s price tag and design splits opinion, it's the car’s connection to Bugatti legend that’s undeniably interesting
As the story goes, back in the 1930’s when Bugatti was at its peak, just four Type 57’s were given special ‘Atlantic bodies’ with one of them being delivered to its creator - Jean Bugatti, son of the brand’s founder, Ettore Bugatti. Among the other Atlantics, this particular car was known as La Voiture Noire or ‘The Black car’. Although its exact history after delivery is uncertain, what is known is that it ended up back at the Molsheim factory before Jean passed away in 1939.
After this, as The Drive’s Jonathan Klein puts it:
“In 1940, at the onset of the German invasion of France in World War II, Ettore Bugatti recognized that the Nazis' destructive path would likely destroy his creations. The apocryphal tale holds that "Ettore sent all his tools and cars on a train to Bordeaux to escape from the Nazi-occupied part of France. The Atlantic was loaded onto that train.” But according to Bravo, La Voiture Noire “never arrived.” It’s here that all traces of La Voiture Noire disappear…”
The original car has never been found and although there are plenty of rumours and hopes that it is waiting to be discovered in a French barn somewhere to rejoin the other three Atlantics, we’ll have to make do with this modern appropriation. With bold concept car styling, it’s definitely a car that splits opinion, but love it or hate it, it’s a fascinating tribute to the legend.
Shot at Peter Auto’s Chantilly Et Elegance 2019
