Bugatti Bulletin Editor

Bugatti chassis-rails were produced by a couple of different manufacturers, and stamped-out by giant presses in the big steel-works operating in France/Germany in the interWar era. Because of the excessive overall length of the un-worked longeron pattern piece, each was arrayed diagonally across the width of the steel sheets that the patterns were stamped from. This had an additional benefit, in that the side-to-side "grain" of the sheet steel was, for each longeron, cut "on the bias" (in dress-maker's terms) which meant that it was much more agreeable to the 90 degree folding along its edges, without cracking and failure. Ettore Bugatti was a bit of tight-arse, and he wasn't so fussed about who made his chassis-rails, or what they were made from, so long as he could get a bunch of them made for a good price. As a result, there are interesting variations in the thicknesses and composition of steel detected in authentic Bugatti chassis-rails arising from different periods and models and suppliers, through the 1920s and 30s. It is useful to note, however, that none of it involved blokes bashing away with big hammers. This was, after all, the era of Krups, and BIG engineering!

Hi Peter; Your project was brought to my notice by a fellow member of Bugatti Club Australia, where I'm Editor of the Bugatti Bulletin, a twice-yearly journal which is distributed world-wide, having been published since 1960s. It's one of the most highly-regarded single-marque historical car journals around, and actively seeks to capture NZ Bugatti activity as well as whatever happens in Australia. Fair to say, I'm pretty-much gob-smacked by what you've been doing, and I've spent hours looking through your posts, and those of the many followers who have been tracking and responding to your project. I would love to devote a significant section of our next edition to coverage of your project and the processes you have been pushing through, and I was wondering (a) if this would be agreeable to you, and (b) if you'd be prepared to co-operate with an interview for the Bugatti Bulletin? The latter need not be a "live" interview necessarily, as I could send through a list of questions for you to respond to... I understand that you are in a high-pressure professional situation, and that you'd prefer to be working on your T59 project rather than waiting for a bloody phone call from some dick in Australia... So, yeah, please let me know if you would like to proceed with the above, in some form. I respect that you've been doing this on the down-low, somewhat, but I figure that if the wider Bugatti community gets wind of this extraordinary project, you may find a lot of support that you had not previously anticipated. And if it takes a Village to raise a child, it takes a Community of Artisans to create a Bugatti! Kudos to you and your immense talent. Cheers, Michael Anderson (editor@bugatticlubaustralia.com.au)