Bugatti
The Italian maverick Ettore Bugatti started producing cars bearing his own name in Germany starting in 1909, after having worked for De Dietrich and Mathis. Around 1912 he designed the Peugeots Bebe model. Although Bugattis factory was in Germany, after the first World War and following the Treaty of Versailles Molsheim became French terriotory. The first real success for Bugatti in competition was with his Type 13 which had been designed and built while Molsheim was still part of Germany. Post war came Bugattis first 8 cylinder 2 litre. This was the basis of so many of the later models including the T35 and all its variants, the final version of which was the Type 51. The little 4 cylinder Type 40 and its 8 cylinder 3 litre version Type 44 were the backbone of the income for the factory during the 1920's. So much variety was being designed and made, with everything made in house where possible, with foundry, machine shops, even with Bugattis own purpose designed tooling (along with mostly mostly American built machine tools).
The 1930's saw the advent of the T57 but really everything turned when Ettores eldest son Jean was killed while testing the Le Mans car on the road close to the fcatory in 1939, coupled with serious ongoing union problems at the factory. Ettore died in 1947 at the age of 66, not long after battling the French Government to finally regain his factory (he had been deemed a foreign Italian national), but the writing was now on the wall. His son Roland had not been the natural successor that Jean had been tutored for, so Roland needed to rely on others at the factory for decision making. Colombo designed the advanced 251 and 252 but eventually the company was taken over by Hispano-Suiza who the factory was doing contract work for, at a loss for every componet made as it turned out, in 1963. In the 1990's the name was revived by by Romano Artioli and the EB110 saw light of day in 1991. The Bugatti marque is now owned by the Volkswagen Group.
