Bugatti – The Italian Decade
Publisher: Dalton Watson Fine Books
Author: Gautam Sen
Size: 30,4 x 21,9 cm, bound and hardback volume with dust jacket
Pages: 400 overall
Text: English
Photographs: 790 in colour and b/w
Price: 160 euros
The companies acquired by Romano Artioli have rarely had a very long life, yet they have left their mark in the history of the automotive brands that have passed through the hands of the Mantuan businessman, just think of the relaunch of Lotus with the Elise. His Bugatti decade is one of those. The rebirth of french manufacturer is result to the passion and stubbornness of the entrepreneur who, at the end of the 1980s, by joining forces with two other equally authoritative names like Ferruccio Lamborghini, Paolo Stanzani and Nicola Materazzi, put the prestigious brand back on track.
Those 10 years, crowned by the birth of an iconic car like the EB110, are the subject of the book written by journalist and design expert Gautam Sen, published by Dalton Watson in the Fine Books series. A work with a very neat look, which does not limit itself to retracing the history of those years, but pays a lot of attention to the context: after a dutiful introduction on the origins of the brand, the volume is spread over ten chapters which, in addition to describing one by one the protagonists and places of that enterprise, relive their suggestions by moving back and forth in time among the models that inspired the new Bugatti course.
We then talk about the engineers and designers such as Marcello Gandini, Giorgetto Giugiaro and Paolo Martin, the historic Bugatti Type 35 GP and Type 32 “Tank”, but also about the supercars with which the EB110 (and its EB112 evolution) had the ambition to measure itself, such as the Ferrari F40 and the Porsche 959, and other cars that somehow crossed the path of the reborn Bugatti, of the Blu factory in Campogalliano, of the world speed record and then of the new decline, of the bankruptcy that will bring the brand to the Volkswagen Group. All this through 400 pages full of details and with almost 800 images.
