Searching for the Fauvist's lost Bugatti

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The good (and bad?) thing about Bugattis is that many of them have been methodically researched and exhaustively described by clubs and enthusiasts in books and magazines and online, so if you are looking for a specific car it is never far away if you know where to search for it.

However, there are exceptions and we couldn’t really place the picture seen here of what appears to be a rather stunning Type 57 roadster, almost an open version of the Atlantic. Now, there have been a few Type 57s with two-seat roadster bodies by a number of coachbuilders, but which one is this?

We soon found that Bugatti had one on display at the 1936 Paris Motor Show, but that came with fully enclosed and rather stunning-looking wings which moved with the front wheels. ‘Maybe an answer from designer Jean Bugatti to the Figoni & Falaschi Delahaye,’ wrote one source. That made us look in other directions, but quite possibly that’s where we went wrong as we found that ‘The fully enclosed wings were highly impractical, and the car received new, more conventional wings.’ Does that mean it could be this car after all? It seems so.

Whatever style of wings you prefer, the open two-seater Type 57 became known as either the Roadster Antibes or the Derain Roadster, after the French painter André Derain who, according to one source, was the original buyer of the car. Well, this is food for thought for the Bugatti connoisseurs since not everyone agrees! Anyway, like some of its closed coupé sister models, the Antibes/Derain Roadster is believed to have gone missing since the 1950s, not too long after it had been rebodied by either Ghia or Roger Tunesi and subsequently stolen. ‘Although,’ and we quote again, ‘rumours persist that it survives somewhere in France.’ Well, well…

That just leaves us with the picture. When and where could it be? Essence Benzene NOBA doesn’t bring us any closer and it could possible just be the retouching work of a magazine art editor. Tell us all you know…

Words: Jeroen Booij; picture: archive
 

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