Bugatti Royale: Born - 1929 Died - 1933
It may not be the most expensive classic car ever built, but the creation of Jean Bugatti for his flamboyant father Ettore was certainly the biggest, with a length of some 22 feet. And it had been the glint in the Milan-born Ettore's eye ever since he started building his own cars in Molsheim, Alsace, in 1910. But with growing the business, marriage, and the not inconsiderable inconvenience of the first World War, he didn't get around to his Royale prototype until the end of the "Roaring Twenties", when he had established his reputation and a fair fortune from both racing and road cars. Not to mention an eight-cylinder aero engine he designed for military use.
The name which he developed for his Type 41, Royale, is said to have come from his wish that it would only be sold to royalty. But in fact, of the six production cars that were built, none was. There is a yarn that a king from Albania wanted one, but Ettore refused to sell because he didn't like the man's table manners!
Anyway, with the prototype weighing in at around four tonnes, and everything about the car being exaggerated to the same proportions as its length, it was going to need a horse of an engine. That first chassis was powered by a variant of the aero engine, a 14.7-litre unit that was hard enough to fit under the seven-foot-long bonnet. With 300hp on tap and a massive - for the time - torque of 200 Nm, the car under most conditions never needed to be shifted out of second gear, in which it could go from standstill to close to 100mph.
At a price for the chassis alone of $30,000, and entering the market at the start of the Great Depression, only the very few could afford one, and in fact only three were ever sold by Bugatti. The first, with a classic roadster body shape that has become the quintessential art deco representation of the automobile, went to an extremely wealthy clothing businessman, Dr Armand Esders.
The Esders car in contemporary photographs has a particularly distinguishing feature: it has no headlights. The owner stipulated that they would ruin the flow of the design and, anyway, he never drove at night. The car has since been rebodied, and is now in a museum in Mulhouse - with headlights.
The production cars had a smaller engine than the prototype, though based on the same power unit. With 12.7 litres of capacity, though, they were still massive, and the 250hp output was still way ahead of any car then on the road. As a matter of record, the other two Royales sold went to a German obstetrician, Josef Fuchs, and an Englishman of no recorded occupation, Cuthbert Foster. The remaining three produced were retained within the company, one of them being the personal transport of Ettore Bugatti for the rest of his life. This is believed to be the prototype, rebodied as the Coupe de Ville Napoleon after he crashed it.
The poor sales of the Royale didn't immediately affect the Bugatti fortunes, as the engines designed for the car were later to power trains on the French railway system, one of which - with four of the engines on board - set a rail speed record for the time of 122mph (by the Presidential Train). It was also used to power large boats. More practical Bugatti cars continued to be bought until Jean Bugatti was killed in 1939, and after a wartime of military manufacture Ettore died in 1947, signalling the end of the brand until recent years under Volkswagen ownership.
For fans of The Simpsons , there's a strong Royale connection. The founder of the programme's sponsor, Domino's Pizza, is Tom Monaghan. He bought a Royale for $8.7 million in 1987 and sold it four years later for $8 million, technically losing money in the process. But the publicity value alone at that time was probably the cheapest advertising he could buy in the US.
Just this month, the Bugatti Veyron arrived at the Geneva Motor Show in its final production version. It is said to be the most expensive production car now on sale in the world, but in adjusted money terms it is unlikely to come close to the Royale in its time. Certainly, with 300 copies planned, it will never be as rare.