![]() ![]() The Type 41 was intended to outshine all the other great cars of the day - the Rolls-Royces, Minervas, Duesenbergs, Mercedes-Benzes - at least in terms of sheer size. He laid down plans for the car in 1926, working at his fantastic estate-factory in Molsheim, Alsace-Lorraine, where everything - from the manufacturing facility to the vineyards to the riding stables to the small museum (to hold the sculptures of his late brother, Rembrandt Bugatti) to the "Hostellerie du Pur Sang" (a tiny, elegant hotel to house his customers) - had all been designed by "Le Patron" himself. The Type 41, sometimes called the "Golden Bug," was intended to be his masterpiece - a machine designed solely for princes and kings. He was as much an artist as an engineer, and all his machines embodied an inspired line and form. Ettore Bugatti, the Franco-Italian genius who built some of the world's most exotic automobiles during the 1920s and '30s, is ranked by historians among the giants of car design. Last year a Type 41 Bugatti was purchased at auction for $6.5 million and resold a short time later for a reported $8 million to Domino's Pizza tycoon Thomas Monaghan (whose other toys include the Detroit Tigers baseball team and a brace of $1 million SJ Duesenbergs). It will probably be the first car ever sold for $10 million or more. ![]() Late this fall, Christie's, the famed auction house, will put on the block a Type 41 Bugatti Royale, one of the rarest and most elegant automobiles in the world.
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