Driving through a sleepy Cotswolds village on a recent May weekend brought us to a farm with two large hangars at the entrance. Parked inside one were 10 large shapes shrouded in black cowls, one of which was to be of particular interest and meaning. After a three-hour drive from London, we had finally reached our destination.
The shapes were those of valuable vintage cars and as the cover was slowly peeled back from one to reveal a Bugatti 35 in all its restored splendour, we gasped at its gleaming French blue bodywork, trademark horseshoe radiator topped with the red Bugatti crest before examining it in closer detail. It was an emotional moment, for this car, chassis number 4818, had once belonged to our father Bill McQuillan who bought it in 1937 and raced it for years.
Motorsport in Ireland at that time was doing wonders for the country's image abroad, particularly the Limerick Grand Prix and the Phoenix Park Races. Inaugurated in 1929, with the support of president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State WT Cosgrave, the Irish Grand Prix at the Phoenix Park, according to motoring historian Bob Montgomery, put Ireland on the map internationally at a time when little good news came out of this country. Pathé newsreels covered the events.
We only have black-and-white photos of dad’s Bugatti, so to see it in full colour and witness at first hand the detailed craftsmanship of its restoration was a heart-stopping moment.
The Bugatti 35 has been hailed as one of the most successful racing cars of all time, embodying all of Ettore Bugatti’s great skill, experience and sense of elegance. He was, after all, born into an artistic family in Milan – his father a jewellery and furniture designer, his paternal grandfather an artist and sculptor.
Having established his automobile business in 1909 in the then German town of Molsheim in Alsace, he quickly became known for some of the fastest, most luxurious and technologically advanced racing cars of the day. The type 35A basic model made in 1925 was less expensive than the original and only 139 were sold.
The first private owner of 4818 was Herbert Alen Buckley of Dublin, who bought the three-year-old car from London in May 1930 and kept it for a year before selling it to John Dolan in Kilkenny who in turn passed it to Neville Todd in Skerries. But it came into its own when purchased by car fanatic Redmond Gallagher of Urney Chocolates who installed a Ford V8 engine and gearbox into the car and christened it the USR (Urney Special Racer).
A year later and about to get married he sold it to my father who raced it as the McQuillan V8 Special and overcame the car's braking problems by fitting a set of huge hydraulic brakes. He went on to win many hillclimbs and races in Bray, Kilternan, Limerick, Dublin and was one of only two southern competitors in the NI Craigantlet Hill Climb in August 1938, having come third at the Limerick Grand Prix.
His last major race was the 100 mile Phoenix Park in September 1939, six days after war was declared. Having set the fastest time in practice at 82 mph, he didn’t manage to finish it, but continued to race until the early postwar years when rationing put an end to all non-essential motoring.
Engaged to my mother and planning to marry and start a family, he sold the car to Irwin Catherwood, who went on to win the famous Sexton Trophy in 1951.
After that its fortunes changed again, eventually ending up in Crumlin with "Hammy" Harkness around 1968, where it remained until 1996, when the decision was made to sell it. A motoring historian in the North had discovered that the car had been registered YF 9697 in London in May 1927, one of three type 35A Bugattis invoiced by the factory in September 1926.
Ivan Dutton, a well-known UK Bugatti restorer who had been keeping an eye on it, travelled to Ireland with his wife Mary, bought the car and set about its meticulous restoration to Grand Prix standards.
The car’s important original parts like the chassis, back axles and springs were intact, so the main restoration lay in its bodywork and engine.
It was raced in 1998 and 1999 and was even taken to the US where it came second in the Bugatti Grand Prix.
Restored vintage Bugattis now fetch colossal prices. Ralph Lauren, for instance, has a Bugatti Atlantic Coupe worth well over $40 million, and the Classic Cars Journal in 2018 estimated that the value of restored Bugatti 35As as around $2 million.
The undisclosed asking price of “our” Bugatti was said to be “considerable” and the car now belongs to a private buyer.
When my father was asked by a friend in the 1940s why he had stopped racing and sold the car, he replied that he had traded it in for a pram.
The whereabouts of that pram, however, remain as yet unknown.