Bugatti - Bugatti Type 35
The Bugatti type 35 came about after Ettore Bugatti had built his "cigar shaped" 2 litre GP car based on the T30 , and had no doubt been inspired by the 2 litre GP Fiat he'd seen, and everything fell into place, as he described to the Juneks in his letter describing his next project. The Bugatti Type 35 was built for the 2 litre GP formula that was in force between 1922 and 1925, and for reliability a roller bearing crankshaft was used which at the time meant there was little likelihood of bearing failure as has been experienced on his previous Straight 8 cylinder 2 litre that had conventional white metal bearings. The Type 35 bristled with delightful design from the bodywork and it's fittings to the one piece hollow front axle, advance /retard mechanism, dainty sized dumb irons and a gear change that was incredibly fast. The first cars were non supercharged 2 litre, and when the G.P. formula changed during 1926 and 1927 to 1.5 litre it became the Type 39. For the Targa Florio, which was free of a capacity limit the only stretching that could be done was a marginally longer throw crank to take the Type 35 from 2 litres to 2261cc. In Sicily these 2.3 Bugattis came home in the first three places, so after that these larger engined Bugatti T35 were called the Targa, and when the "Targa" got given a supercharger it became the Targa Compressor, 35TC, or what was later called 35B, which was very useful after the 1.5 litre GP formula came to an end, after which racing was to Formula Libre and limited by weight. The big development on the Type 35 came during the 1.5 litre formula where a lot of effort was put into competing with the Delage. By the Spanish GP in 1927 one of the Bugattis was outperforming the Delage (but crashed) so for the next and final GP of the formula much work was done with larger brake size, and a slew of other modifications, but the Brooklands venue was no road circuit and they didn't succeed. While other teams would build 3 or 4 cars per season for their own works team, Bugatti produced his GP cars for whoever wanted to break into racing even at the top flight, hence most races were dominated by Bugattis! And occasionally a privateer may even beat the Bugatti factory works team, as Rene Dreyfus did at Monaco. After some seven years of Type 35 development, the twin overhead camshaft version of the T35 became the Type 51.
Tyre size for the different Bugatti Type 35:
- The earlier T35 Bugatti with alloy wheels used the beaded edge tyre size 710x90, and Blockley produce the perfect 710x90 tyre and tube to suit.
- Early cars when well base wheels came along would now use a 450x19 tyre size. The Blockley is the most authentic tyre you can source in this size.
- Bugatti Type 35A (Tecla) tyre size would use 450x19 - the Blockley 450x19 tyre is as close as you can get to what Bugatti fitted in period.
- All other Bugatti 35 types (35B and 35C) used the 500x19 tyre size. We are advised that some outlets seem to think these supercharged Bugattis were fitted with smaller tyres in period, and that is untrue.
- A really good option for the non supercharged cars is 450x19 front tyres and the Blockley 475x19 tyres on the rear. . .
- Note that prewar all inner tubes had a metal valve stem, which Blockley produces the perfect correctly dimensioned examples of, with nickel plating as original. The rubber valve stem had not yet been invented.
