Though the son of an artist and training to be a sculptor, Ettore Bugatti wanted to be an engineer and became an apprentice with a Milan engineering company in 1898.
Born: 1899
Nationality: Italian
Within a year he was designing and building cars, and his three-wheel two-engine racer came third in the Paris-Bordeaux race.
An enthusiastic young man, he fell out with his employers who wouldn't follow his dreams. In 1899 he quit and, with backing from a local family, built his first real car. The drivetrain specification - four-cylinder OHV, battery ignition and a four-speed gearbox - wouldn't seem unusual today, but was then seen as extraordinary in engineering terms. Soon he was in demand all over Europe for bespoke cars.
In 1909 he set up a factory in a former dye works at Molsheim in Alsace and developed a small lightweight racer - the antithesis of the thinking of the time in this area. At Le Mans in 1911 it came second behind a massive Fiat and, in the process, began a change in race-car design philosophy which endures to today's Formula One challengers.
Bugatti's operation prospered, but as the first World War loomed, he knew that he had to leave Alsace. He buried three cars under his cellar, moved his family to Italy and then went to Paris to design aircraft engines for the French government. One of his designs, a straight-eight built under licence by the Duesenberg Brothers in New Jersey in the US, powered many American warplanes.
After the war, Bugatti returned to Molsheim, dug up his cars and resumed his first passion. He continued to experiment with the engineering as well as producing really beautiful vehicles. In 1923 he came up with a car with the first aluminium wheels and integrated aluminium brake drums.
Since virtually every car built by his craftsmen was different, spare parts for any Bugatti had to be individually machined. The Molsheim operation was less a factory than an Italian master artist's workplace built in true grand style. Customers stayed at the estate in a specially-built hotel. They went shooting and fishing and watched their car crafted in workshops behind massive polished oak doors and bronze locks.
Bugatti was a man who needed to be in total control of his "empire". He designed all his cars himself.
He did delegate to his son Jean the task of overseeing the marque's racing side, generally accepted to have been the most successful of any car brand. Bugattis, in sky-blue livery, won more than 1,000 races in 1925 and 1926 alone and dominated racing from the mid-1920s until the second World War.
This success consolidated the prestige of Bugatti. The variety of coupé, sedan and convertible road models produced by Bugatti had rakish flowing lines that suggested speed. It was more than suggestion - a Type 57 version built in the mid-1930s can still do 130 mph.
Bugatti moved to Paris again at the outbreak of war. He continued designing while also providing a meeting place for the Resistance, during the German occupation.
The strain of those times, and the deaths of many of his friends and members of his family, finally took its toll and Ettore Bugatti died in 1947. Up to the time that VW acquired the Bugatti marque in 1998, it also seemed that it would be the beginning of the end of the production of Bugatti cars, as his heirs refused to have the name on any car not designed directly by "Le Patron" himself. However, a long-promised supercar, the Veyron, has been seen at several recent motor shows, and may finally get into full production this year.
Best Car: The Type 57 (pictured) by objective suggestion, but each Bugatti built is the best car to its owner today.
Worst Car: Don't even think it.
Weirdest Car: Perhaps the one produced in 1929, the largest car in the world, and with a massive straight-eight engine. The Great Depression ensured that only a few were built.