Bugatti
and their cars
Hello!
Hi, my name is Danny Fowler and this is my website. Thanks for visiting it.
I fell in love with Bugattis decades ago when I saw an old black and white film about them. I remember it was flickery and scratched with the odd flash of light, and I've never been able to find it since, but it showed a lot of heroic (to me, as a young lad) men risking death and destruction tearing around race tracks. And the ones past the chequered flag first seemed to invariably be driving Bugattis.
I built up a huge collection of diecast model cars - I wish I still had them, they would be worth a fortune now - as well as cigarette cards, which were legal then. I gave the models away but kept the cards. Typically, I did the exact opposite of what I should have done.
The more I've read about the old pioneers of motoring the more respect I feel for them. It must have been a really difficult time to actually make money from car manufacture and it's sobering to see just how many of them went bankrupt. I suspect though that the magic of winning races was just as important to them as commercial success, and perhaps more so.
Cars nowadays are so very much safer, and far more economical to both buy and run whereas when Ettore Bugatti first started out motoring was a hobby strictly for the rich. They are more comfortable and far more reliable now. I can't help but feel, though, that they have lost a certain character. True, we still have some wonderful makes such as Jaguar, Lotus, Morgan, Ferrari, but most of them are no longer under the control of the families that first gave them birth. Mass produced cars all seem to look the same now; they are designed by wind tunnels and not by engineers with artistic abilities. Cars have become a staple homogenised product rather than a work of engineering art and we are all a bit poorer for it.
Thanks for reading this and if you fance getting in touch