caapa

The fourth car was built without anyone who want to buy it. Ettore ordered a closed coupe body at the coachbuilder Kellner. The car was the winner of Most Expensiv Car of Show in London Motor Show 1932. Well for the price of Kellner Coach you would have been able to buy 3 Rolls Royce! It survived the WWII in a hidden garage behind a wall together with other two Royale on the estate of Family Bugatti. The gracefull car arrived the highest auctions price of Royales till now.
The build of model was a routine soon. The all black enterieur don`t allow to see any details inside there is not very much even the dashboard is black painted. The only one to see is the knob on gear stick made of ivory of course on the original one.
 

The car is built not for sale but for the Family Bugatti. The style of car is Ettores prefered traditional coach-style with yelow black combination.
Typical to the Royale cars that the daughter of Ettore was able to drive the car without any greater phisycal effort. The Berline de Voyage was an ever second car: the second that survived the WWII, the second Royale owned by Briggs Cunnings and arrived the second highest price of Royales on an auction  6.5 million USD

I built the model with opened driver compartment too to show the details that ones remain rather hidden behind the closed windows. As I have no pictures with opened soft top I didn`t want to make an eventually total mistaken arrangement of the back part of body. (is there a frame for the doors, fastened or removable, is the window between driver and passanger compartment removable with its frame  etc. are open questions)
 

It was the first sold Bugatti Royale. The roadster was designed by Jean Bugatti for Armand Esders a textile industrialist. As requested the car was built without headlights because Mr Esders never drived after sunset. But he got the headlights in a little mahagony case onto all possiblities. Later was the car sold and rebodied by coachbuilder Binder. Today existing a replica of the Esders Roadster, half way built from original Bugatti parts.
A modelmaker friend of mine saw the growing fleet of Royales on the model exhibitions year by year and at least said good, good but open the doors! ( you have to know he was the one who infected me with the idea to open doors on 1:24 models) So I done my best with the doors altough they are not functioning. (there was an other modeler  a profi  on the exhibition who built a mail van in wild-west stile with functioning doors in 1:87 scale ! What a pity I couldn`t solve his secret since then.)

The damaged Weimann coupe was dismantled and only the chassis was saved. It was shortened 30 cm and Weimann built the wonderfull Napoleon Coupe body on it based on the design of Jean Bugatti. The Bugatti family used the car till 1963.
I made the upholstery by self made decals. I could reproduce the pattern based on photos made by my son in the Musée National de l'Automobile in Mulhouse.

Bugatti T 41 Royale Weimann Coupe #41100 1929 in 1:75 scale
The fourth body on the prototype chassis was built by the famous coachbuilder Weimann. The car was painted black, the black and yellow combination turned out only on later figures. The car was used by the Bugatti family. After an abundant dinner Ettore and his doughter has an accident and the car was heavily damaged.
I built the model with the black and yellow combination because I heard only later about the originaly made full black paintjob. Well that time I had no internet still.