Bugatti Type 73c 1943
Begun in 1943 and completed in 1947 after the war, the Type 73C was to be a comeback for Bugatti.
But the death of Ettore Bugatti in August of that year doomed the project. An engine-less Type 73 was shown at the 1947 Paris Motor Show two months later. Although five 73C chassis had been constructed in Paris, Only one body was completed for these cars and at least three engines and one complete car were assembled and tested by the factory. Serge Pozzoli stated that he visited the Bugatti factory at Rue Debarcadere in Paris where he saw a demonstration car which was fitted with a scaled down body similar to the pre-war Type 50BIII (Cork Car). All the cars were dismantled and taken to Molsheim after Ettore Bugatti's death.
The Type 73C used a new 1.5 L (1488 cc/90 in³) straight-4 engine with 4 valves per cylinder and a twin overhead camshaft. This was a new design with a 76 mm bore and 95 mm stroke, wet cylinder liners, a detachable cylinder head, and a single cast iron exhaust manifold. Much to the chagrin of Bugatti purists, the Type 73 used off-the-shelf hex fasteners rather than the custom-designed parts used in all previous cars.
The five Type 73C chassis were sold off after the company exited automobile production. Most were later assembled, and one (number 2) was even given a body based on the original Bugatti drawings.
There are several prototype Type 73 Bugatti models.
- Type 73: Touring two- or four-seater; four-cylinder, twin overhead camshaft, four valves per cylinder
- Type 73A: Touring two- or four-seater four-cylinder Single ovehead camshaft with three valves per cylinder.
- Type 73C: Grand Prix single seater: The engine fitted to this car is similar to the Type 73
- Type 73B: touring two- or four-seater: Similar engine to the Type 73 but with single overhead camshaft.
At Bonhams
Ettore Bugatti's death on 21st August 1947 - his son Jean having perished in a testing accident in 1939 - effectively signalled the beginning of the end for this once-great marque. By the early 1930s Ettore Bugatti had established an unrivalled reputation for building cars with outstanding performance on road or track; the world's greatest racing drivers enjoying countless successes aboard the Molsheim factory's products and often choosing them for their everyday transport. And although the coming of World War 2 would see the Molsheim factory reduced to ruins, it did not stop work on the development of new models, one of which - a supercharged four-cylinder - had been hinted at by Jean Bugatti in 1939. That car was the Type 73, a 1½-litre model to be built in a variety of forms for both road and track use.
The Type 73's all-alloy engine featured wet cylinder liners, a five-bearing crankshaft, and a detachable cylinder head, the latter a first for Bugatti, two camshafts and 16 valves, while the gearbox was an all-synchromesh four-speeder in the 73C(as the racing version would be named), it was initially planned to fit the road version with an automatic transmission designed by Ettore Bugatti himself. Although no road car was ever fitted either with this gearbox or the twin-camshaft engine, the realities of attempting to productionise the design dictated it would be fitted with a single camshaft engine and a Cotal gearbox. Writing to The Motormagazine in September 1945, R A Bouchard of Automobiles E Bugatti revealed that some 20 examples of the racing version were planned, though this ambition would prove impossible to fulfil in the difficult economic conditions of the immediately post-war years. Nevertheless, production got under way at the old La Licorne factory in Levallois, Paris, the Molsheim site being still unusable.
At the 1947 Paris Motor Show, held at the Grand Palais in October, an engine-less Type 73 chassis was displayed together with examples of both the single-cam and twin-cam engine. But with Ettore Bugatti already dead, the project lost its impetus and the stock of Type 73C parts remained in storage at Molsheim until 1960 when one set of components - chassis '73C 001' - was acquired by Jean de Dobbeleer, the Brussels-based Bugatti agent.
De Dobbeleer fitted a monoposto body based on proposals for Type 73C coachwork made in 1945 by Bugatti designer, Antoine Pichetto. The car was quickly sold on and de Dobbeleer then returned to Molsheim and acquired a second Type 73C. That car - '73C 002' - was sold in rolling chassis form to an American buyer and remained in the USA until 1973 when it was purchased by Tom Wheatcroft for his Donington Collection of Grand Prix cars. In fact, all five Type 73Cs survive: '73C 001' is in the Haruda Collection in Japan; '002' is back in the USA in private ownership; '003' is in the Cité de l'Automobile Museum in Mulhouse (formerly the Schlumpf Collection); '004' is the car offered here; and '005' is owned and raced by Tom Dark.
Chassis numbers '004' and '005' had been purchased from Molsheim in the early 1960s by Bart Loyens (invoice available). Ownership then progressed via Ray Jones, Rudi Derx, and then the current vendor, John Barton, who acquired them in 1985. Chassis '004' has been fitted with a new engine block but comes with the frost-damaged original (stamped '4'), while the gearbox has been fitted with a steel plate at the rear to cure a known fault (original casting available). It also has an electric starter, the latter fitted recently by marque specialist, Ivan Dutton.
'004' was tested on a racetrack for the first time ever at Angoulême in 2014 and is now ready to race, being offered with a VSCC Blue Form (1985). Tom Dark's sister car has raced at the Goodwood Revival and other similar events and has proved to be most competitive against contemporary ERA and Maserati competition, showing what a good design the Bugatti Type 73C is and how competitive this car could be in the right hands.