BUGATTI, Ettore
(b. 1881, Milano, d. 1947, Paris)

Type 41 Bugatti Royale

1927
Photo
Musée National de L'Automobile, Mulhouse

The Bugatti Type 41, better known as the Royale, is a large luxury car built from 1927 to 1933 with a 6.4 m overall length. It is one of the largest cars in the world.

Ettore Bugatti planned to build twenty-five of these cars and sell them to royalty as the most luxurious car ever, but even European royalty was not buying such things during the Great Depression, and Bugatti was able to sell only three of the seven made (six still exist, one destroyed in the wreck).

The radiator cap is adorned by a dancing elephant sculpted by Rembrandt Bugatti in plaster in 1903 and reproduced by René Lalique.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.