Bugatti Type 35A

Looks like I’ve made a significant error here. This is a Type 37A, not a 35A.

Sunday, June 24

We’re trying to mix things up a bit for our monthly LoCo meetings. Normally we meet on a Tuesday evening, alternating between north and south locations in metro Denver. Not everybody can make it on a Tuesday, though, so we’re mixing in the occasional weekend date. For our June meeting, Victor kindly hosted us at High Mountain Classics where we had pizza and a tour of his shop.

My last visit here was a year ago when I picked up my car (after the ordeal of the camshafts). I’m still missing the box of stuff I (used to) carry in the boot: my front license plate, some tools, a towel, the bag for my soft top, and so on. So when Victor kicked off the tour I offered to buy a beer for anybody who spotted my box. Sadly, I had no need to make good on that offer. The box is still missing and I need to start replacing those items.

In the shop today were an interesting variety of cars. There were two nice Cadillacs, an old Chevy, a Porsche, Jim’s X180R, and a few others. High Mountain Classic’s raison d’être, of course, is restoring pre-war Bugattis. There was only one resident in the shop so it garnered a lot of attention.

This example is a 1927 Type 35A. The Type 35A, nicknamed ‘Tecla’ was an ‘inexpensive’ version of the Type 35 and made its first appearance in May of 1925. Its nickname was given by the public after a maker of imitation jewelry. There’s a tenuous Lotus connection here. Tecla is an anagram of the French word for brilliant: eclat. And, of course, there’s a model of Lotus called the Eclat.

While we’re on the subject of names, the modern Bugatti Chiron is named for the oldest man to ever race in Formula 1. Louis Chiron was 55 when he took sixth place in the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix. But he made his name behind the wheel of various Type 35’s in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

The engine of the Type 35A was a reliable unit borrowed from the Type 30. It used three bearings, had smaller valves, coil ignition, and produced less horsepower than the 90 or so of its Type 35 sibling. Only 139 examples of the Type 35A were created.

It looks like quite the beast to drive. It’s not a big car, and the driver doesn’t so much sit in it as on it. The tires are skinny and look quite hard; and of course tire compounds have come a long way in the last 90 years. There are a number of brake levers and cables run along the outside of the bodywork. Even with the old brake technology, I’m sure it produces sufficient stopping power. Any more and it would be too easy to lock up the wheels.

I found a video of this particular car being driven at Laguna Seca for a reunion race back in 2010. He turns a lap of 2:09.6. For comparison, in my modern car on modern street tires, I managed a 1:55. In the video, when he is following another Bugatti, you can see the other driver leaning out of the car in the right-hand turns. I’m sure it was quite the thrilling car to drive fast, particularly with no racing harness or even three-point seat belts.

I love that the owners of these seven figure works of art aren’t shy about mounting their cameras to the cars. This is not the first time I’ve seen a GoPro adhesive mount on one of these cars. I particularly like the attention to detail of the period-correct wire reinforcement of the fastener, even for the anachronistic camera mount. It was seeing a GoPro mount on a car in this shop a few years ago that convinced me it was okay to put one on my car. If it’s okay to glue one to a multi-million dollar antique I shouldn’t feel bad about putting one on my car.

Update

I do all this research on this particular car, even finding a video of it in action. But I somehow miss on that page that the car is a Type 37A, not a Type 35A. If I’d have known much about Bugattis, my error would have been obvious: the 37A is a four cylinder and the 35A is an eight. You can’t take me anywhere. 

The 37A is almost identical to the 35A: same body, same chassis, same wire wheels, same wheelbase. Bugatti produced 286 of the Type 37’s, 76 of them the supercharged Type 37A. In the supercharged version, performance was greatly improved over the naturally aspirated model, giving the car a top speed of 122 mph. The 37A models were raced in some of the world’s greatest endurance races at the time, including the Mille Miglia, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the Targa Florio.