Following is an abridged version of my test of the ultimate French car last month, a 1927 Bugatti type 35B...
We went back and put a video camera on it the following week... any excuse to drive it again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYc_kvvxLCc
The car proudly wears the scars and travel stains of it’s years of active motoring and even though it is an inanimate object, it is almost as if it sits in the driveway begging to be driven. And who can resist the charms of a thoroughbred Alsatian?
Unlike a modern car, one doesn’t just jump in, turn the key and drive off in one of these, but the starting procedure is certainly around three hours quicker (literally!) that that needed to start a modern Grand Prix car. Once oil and water levels are checked and taps are on for fuel supply and oil to the supercharger, the wooden-handled pump on the riding mechanic’s side of the snug cockpit needs to be worked vigorously to pressurise the fuel tank located in the tail just behind the driver’s seat. This is most comfortably done standing outside the car, before walking around to the driver’s side and climbing in. This too needs a little thought in order to maintain at least some sense of decorum. The cockpit is small and the steering wheel is not. You need to get a leg either side of the wheel and then lower yourself down into the thin but surprisingly comfortable black leather seat. Then flick the nickel plated lever in the centre of the dash up to retard the spark from the magneto, unscrew the brass knob of the Ki-gass pump and give it two or three strokes to squirt raw fuel into the manifold, then get the riding mechanic to give the starting-handle a swift pull up and that should bring the engine into life.
But one thing they are not is quiet. The crank runs in roller bearings and the single overhead cam, which operates three valves per cylinder is gear driven as is the large supercharger. The end result is a cacophony of sound from under the bonnet, complemented by the unmistakable bark of a GP Bugatti coming from the twin pipes exiting at the rear of the car. It really is one of the most intoxicating sounds in the motoring universe!
Once installed in the car I was reminded of just how small Grand Prix drivers must have been in the 1920s. My left calf was pushed against the gearbox and once it warmed up, so did my leg. On the other side my right leg was hard against the bulkhead support. There is a reason why the gearlever pokes out through a gap in the bodywork and lives outside the car alongside the handbrake. There is just no room for it inside the car nor the space to actually operate it if it were.
The tiny clutch pedal only has a very short movement and even with it depressed fully, the clutch doesn’t always clear completely and there is no way to delicately feed the lever into gear if it hasn’t. The accepted technique is to put your fingers behind the lever and quickly snatch it into gear. Either way it will go in. It might be silent or it might protest but in the end, the result is the same. The shift pattern is not quite conventional and takes a minute or two to become accustomed to. And it does pay to make sure you know exactly where you are wanting to put the lever for the next gear, the ‘box may be vintage but it does not like slow changes. Best just to stamp twice on the clutch and at the same time flick the lever through the exposed brass gate to the next position. Low gear is left and back. Then with the palm of your hand, push the lever straight forward for second gear and it just gets better. With fingers behind the lever, pull it back to neutral, to the right and back again for third and this takes a fraction of the time it took you to read this line.
Meanwhile the note from the exhaust, a combination of eight-cylinder rumble and rasp from a pure competition motor, complete with the mechanical sound of all those components whirring away up front, accompanied by the whine from the straight-cut gears in the transmission increasing in pitch as speed increases all are part of the Grand Prix Bugatti experience and in this car, while definitely dominant, are not over-powering. You sit very low in the open cockpit and the twin aero-screens do their job well in directing the slipstream away from the crew. Certainly this is not exactly a restful car to ride in or drive, yet it is still perfectly acceptable for long-distance motoring and once the gear lever is pushed straight forward into top gear and the direct-driven ratio, much of the sound emanating from the gearbox which sits uncovered between driver and passenger vanishes.
The suspension, half-elliptic springs up front and reversed quarter elliptic at the rear is firm and every change in road surface is communicated directly to the driver’s rump. The steering is very direct and loads up as cornering speeds increase, again constantly feeding information from the road back to the driver’s arms. This is not to say that driving at speed is a wrestling match. Far from it, this is a car which demands finger-tip delicacy from the driver. Should you make the mistake of grabbing hold of any of the controls and forcing them, you will go nowhere fast, make some horrible noises and most likely, break something. Be gentle, just suggest to the car what you want to do, be decisive but delicate and it comes alive, as if it is reading your mind.
Now I suspect you might now be thinking I am talking a load of drivel, but when you point that long louvered bonnet at the apex of a corner and lean in as if you are riding a bike, the Bugatti just bends to your will and the sensation is amazing, I have yet to drive another car, vintage, modern or anywhere between which “talks” to you like these cars do.
Cruising along, holding the loosely in the quarter to three position – on the road there is no need to take your hands over-centre in anything but a tight hairpin bend, this is as good as it gets! The instruments are all located on the riding mechanics side of the dash, giving fuel and oil pressure readings, while the driver just gets a mechanical rev-counter and there is a charm all in itself with the jerky movements of the black needle on the white-faced instrument. Engine temperature is monitored from the Boyce Moto-Meter in the radiator cap.
We went back and put a video camera on it the following week... any excuse to drive it again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYc_kvvxLCc
The car proudly wears the scars and travel stains of it’s years of active motoring and even though it is an inanimate object, it is almost as if it sits in the driveway begging to be driven. And who can resist the charms of a thoroughbred Alsatian?
Unlike a modern car, one doesn’t just jump in, turn the key and drive off in one of these, but the starting procedure is certainly around three hours quicker (literally!) that that needed to start a modern Grand Prix car. Once oil and water levels are checked and taps are on for fuel supply and oil to the supercharger, the wooden-handled pump on the riding mechanic’s side of the snug cockpit needs to be worked vigorously to pressurise the fuel tank located in the tail just behind the driver’s seat. This is most comfortably done standing outside the car, before walking around to the driver’s side and climbing in. This too needs a little thought in order to maintain at least some sense of decorum. The cockpit is small and the steering wheel is not. You need to get a leg either side of the wheel and then lower yourself down into the thin but surprisingly comfortable black leather seat. Then flick the nickel plated lever in the centre of the dash up to retard the spark from the magneto, unscrew the brass knob of the Ki-gass pump and give it two or three strokes to squirt raw fuel into the manifold, then get the riding mechanic to give the starting-handle a swift pull up and that should bring the engine into life.
But one thing they are not is quiet. The crank runs in roller bearings and the single overhead cam, which operates three valves per cylinder is gear driven as is the large supercharger. The end result is a cacophony of sound from under the bonnet, complemented by the unmistakable bark of a GP Bugatti coming from the twin pipes exiting at the rear of the car. It really is one of the most intoxicating sounds in the motoring universe!
Once installed in the car I was reminded of just how small Grand Prix drivers must have been in the 1920s. My left calf was pushed against the gearbox and once it warmed up, so did my leg. On the other side my right leg was hard against the bulkhead support. There is a reason why the gearlever pokes out through a gap in the bodywork and lives outside the car alongside the handbrake. There is just no room for it inside the car nor the space to actually operate it if it were.
The tiny clutch pedal only has a very short movement and even with it depressed fully, the clutch doesn’t always clear completely and there is no way to delicately feed the lever into gear if it hasn’t. The accepted technique is to put your fingers behind the lever and quickly snatch it into gear. Either way it will go in. It might be silent or it might protest but in the end, the result is the same. The shift pattern is not quite conventional and takes a minute or two to become accustomed to. And it does pay to make sure you know exactly where you are wanting to put the lever for the next gear, the ‘box may be vintage but it does not like slow changes. Best just to stamp twice on the clutch and at the same time flick the lever through the exposed brass gate to the next position. Low gear is left and back. Then with the palm of your hand, push the lever straight forward for second gear and it just gets better. With fingers behind the lever, pull it back to neutral, to the right and back again for third and this takes a fraction of the time it took you to read this line.
Meanwhile the note from the exhaust, a combination of eight-cylinder rumble and rasp from a pure competition motor, complete with the mechanical sound of all those components whirring away up front, accompanied by the whine from the straight-cut gears in the transmission increasing in pitch as speed increases all are part of the Grand Prix Bugatti experience and in this car, while definitely dominant, are not over-powering. You sit very low in the open cockpit and the twin aero-screens do their job well in directing the slipstream away from the crew. Certainly this is not exactly a restful car to ride in or drive, yet it is still perfectly acceptable for long-distance motoring and once the gear lever is pushed straight forward into top gear and the direct-driven ratio, much of the sound emanating from the gearbox which sits uncovered between driver and passenger vanishes.
The suspension, half-elliptic springs up front and reversed quarter elliptic at the rear is firm and every change in road surface is communicated directly to the driver’s rump. The steering is very direct and loads up as cornering speeds increase, again constantly feeding information from the road back to the driver’s arms. This is not to say that driving at speed is a wrestling match. Far from it, this is a car which demands finger-tip delicacy from the driver. Should you make the mistake of grabbing hold of any of the controls and forcing them, you will go nowhere fast, make some horrible noises and most likely, break something. Be gentle, just suggest to the car what you want to do, be decisive but delicate and it comes alive, as if it is reading your mind.
Now I suspect you might now be thinking I am talking a load of drivel, but when you point that long louvered bonnet at the apex of a corner and lean in as if you are riding a bike, the Bugatti just bends to your will and the sensation is amazing, I have yet to drive another car, vintage, modern or anywhere between which “talks” to you like these cars do.
Cruising along, holding the loosely in the quarter to three position – on the road there is no need to take your hands over-centre in anything but a tight hairpin bend, this is as good as it gets! The instruments are all located on the riding mechanics side of the dash, giving fuel and oil pressure readings, while the driver just gets a mechanical rev-counter and there is a charm all in itself with the jerky movements of the black needle on the white-faced instrument. Engine temperature is monitored from the Boyce Moto-Meter in the radiator cap.