Transcript
Introduction
If there was a prototype operation for what Enzo Ferrari envisioned, it had to be what the legendary Ettore Bugatti built in Molsheim. This part artist, part engineer, part entrepreneur, part sculptor had created an automotive fiefdom in a tiny village in Alsace–Lorraine, France. The Bugatti estate included a small, elegant inn for the entertainment of customers, a stable of thorough bread horses, and the factory itself, which was a series of low buildings set among landscaped gardens with a trout stream meandering through the factory machinery.
Bugatti was from Milan, born into a family of artists. The boss, as he was known, was generally to be found conducting business, dressed in riding breeches, boots, and a yellow coat. His automobiles were and remain a stunning combination of industrial aesthetics and the jewelers' art, as if Faberge has somehow been able to motorize an egg. They were simple, flawlessly fabricated and reliable. Bugatti was just one of a bevy of colorful eccentrics, dissolute nobles, playboys, dreaming commoners and hard-eyed egomaniacs who populated the world of European Motorsports in the 1930s.