Drove to Dana Point last weekend and enjoyed the annual 356 Club Concours, presented this year with much greater 911 content, but since others have already posted lots of reports and pictures about this event, I'd like to concentrate on another aspect of my trip to southern California.
I had made arrangements for a private "by-appointment" tour of the wonderful Peter Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard on the Monday after the above. I had been there once before, in June of '10, but Peter M. hadn't purchased what has since become the centerpiece of his collection, the '36 Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic Coupe, from the late Dr. Williamson's estate yet at the time. Right after the purchase, for which he paid a record price for any automobile up to that time incidentally, a whopping US $34.3 Million, the car went to Retromobile in Paris along with the Voisin Aerodyne Sedan, which was the winner of the '12 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance "Best of Show" award. Now that the unique Bugatti Coupe has returned to its splendidly reconstructed digs in Oxnard, the timing for a follow-up visit worked out perfectly.
The unquestioned pinnacle of Ettore Bugatti's efforts to build the best engineered, fastest, most beautiful, most exotic and most expensive sports cars the world had known up to that point came together in 1936 through 1938 when he took his extremely successful straight-eight cylinder, supercharged Type 59 Grand-Prix engine of 2.8 liters, enlarged it to approx. 3.3 liters and gave his very artistically talented son Jean Bugatti the assignment to design the ultimate 2-seater Grand Touring Coupe around the drivetrain and the latest steel-ladder type "surbaisse" ( French for "lowered" ) chassis, with the solid rear axle running through the longitudinal frame members instead of under the frame rails, as in previous designs.
Four Atlantique Coupes were built in the period just before WW II, with the light metallic blue car featured at the Mullin Museum being the first model, built in '36 specifically for the Baron de Rothshild, being sent back to the factory for major modifications, and then modified and restored several times during its life by subsequent owners and finally purchased by its last owner, famous East Coast neurologist Dr. Williamson for the then unheard of sum of $59,000. More than 30 years later, Peter Mullin spent more than 34 million in '11 to make it his. All the photos below except #2 and #3 are of this car.
The second second car was severely damaged in a major accident involving a train in France. Since the married driver and his female passenger, who was not his wife, both died in the collision, the family, seeking to avoid a scandal had the car squirreled away in a shed where it stayed for decades until a very shoddy restoration 30 years ago or so using inexperienced workers and many non-original parts and acquiring the reputation of being a replica. It was recently bought by a Swiss collector who scoured the globe for all the left-over, damaged original parts, engine, transmission, etc. and finally re-united the fully and this time expertly restored parts to make it the third, albeit, least authentic of the three surviving models. It's the slate grey car which was presented at Pebble Beach in '10.
Number three is the last surviving Atlantique, i.e. the highest Serial numbered car. It is the black '38 Coupe which was restored masterfully by the Paul Russell organization for Ralph Lauren in the mid '90s. It has since won "Best of Show" at Pebble Beach in the late '90s, and earlier this year won "Best of Show" at the Villa d'Este Concours. The attached photo of the car is when it was on display last year at the Louvre in Paris along with the bulk of the R. Lauren Collection.
Number four was totally destroyed in another incident involving a train somewhere in France shortly after it was sold and is agreed to be lost forever, with no trails left to follow and explore.
It's difficult to describe the feeling that overcomes the observer when you are mere inches away from one of the most iconic cars ever produced. The towering presence of one of the most beautiful forms ever on four wheels, no matter where you encounter one of these treasures, perhaps the knowledge that you are in the presence of an object for which a man just paid almost 35 million dollars and was the most expensive car ever sold for less than a year until the $ 35 mill. a Seattle collector paid for a highly original Series I 250 Ferrari GTO eclipsed that price by a few hundred thousand dollars all conspire to elevate the vanishingly small number of the surviving three Atlantics to the status of the best, most collectable of fine art, but I openly confess that it is very similar to the feeling of quietly gazing at the Mona Lisa or being completely awed and made to feel very insignificant by Michelangelo's Pieta in St. Peters.
I feel singularly fortunate and privileged to have seen all three of these cars and to have had the opportunity to record their images with a camera.
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