Private enterprise

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Parisian coachbuilder Louis Dubos was best known for streamlined road-car bodies, and one certainly wouldn’t associate his name with racing cars because his workshop isn’t known to have clothed any, save for this one Bugatti Type 57S, chassis 57522. It’s a basic body, but then Dubos’s first and only attempt at competition coachwork was built to a very tight deadline.

Bugatti Type 57S

Commissioned by Raymond de Saugé, it got off to a slightly ignominious start, as its 11th-place finish in its first race also happened to be last, but privateers de Saugé and Genaro Léoz would give are spectable performance among the Works Type 57G ‘Tanks’ and Delahayes in the 1937 Le Mans. De Saugé and other owners would continue to race 57522 after the war, but no major victories were forthcoming.

In 1949, a new owner, Henri Degioanni, had aspirations of racing in the 1950 Marseilles Grand Prix and reclothed the 57S with a monoplace body, but an accident before the event tragically claimed his life. It then migrated to America where it somehow ended up sporting a tasteless roadster body with carburetter intake pipes poking through the bonnet.

The Bugatti was dismantled for restoration, but no progress was made until the present owner left it in the capable hands of Ivan Dutton Ltd, which has just restored it after painstakingly recreating the Dubos bodywork. Mick Walsh celebrates 57522’s rebirth in the April issue of The Automobile, on sale now.

Words by Zack Stiling. Photographs by Tony Baker.

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