Bugatti Type 35B
Arguably the world’s first pure-bred racing car, the Type 35 pushed the trajectory of motorsport further ahead than any car had done before it. It was conceived by the French marque’s founder Ettore Bugatti, and over the course of production won more than 2000 races. A hundred years later, it continues to be a deeply emblematic and evocative racing car, utterly unmistakable from any angle.
The Type 35 features a tapered rear end and a horseshoe-shaped radiator. The latter has become a design signature that Bugatti continues to employ on its contemporary models, while the former is redolent of every serious racing car of that era. In fact, the Type 35 established the template for all successful racing cars that came after it for perhaps 10 years, such was Ettore’s pace-setting design.
Bugatti himself was not even a trained engineer, and that makes the Type 35 – which featured several ground breaking innovations – even more remarkable. Key to its success was a focus on weight-saving and a low centre of gravity, with the driver sitting closer to the ground than in any of the Type 35’s contemporaries. The low-weight regime was obsessive yet creative, and included a hollow front axle in an effort to cut kilograms wherever possible. Equally clever was the pressurised petrol tank, which allowed for maximum fuel flow. The Type 35 was also the first car to use cast alloy wheels.
Some 340 Type 35s were produced in a number of variations; the car you see in front of you is a Type 35B which, despite Ettore’s lack of enthusiasm for forced induction, features a supercharger. This increased the power output from the straight-eight-cylinder engine to over 130hp. It’s often considered the ultimate variant of the Type 35, with far better cooling, brakes and suspension than the model that made its debut in 1924.
Among the enormous number of victories taken by the Type 35 in period, several major wins stand out. A Type 35B like this won the inaugural Monaco Grand Prix in 1929, driven by the British driver William Grover-Williams. Even more impressive are the five consecutive Targa Florio victories taken by a Type 35 between 1925 and 1929.
On display from Tuesday 2 to Tuesday 16 July.
