Bugatti History & Company Founder
Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti (1881–1947) was an Italian-born and French naturalized citizen automobile designer and manufacturer. Ettore Bugatti was from a notably artistic family with its origin in Milan. He was the elder son of Carlo Bugatti (1856–1940), an important Art Nouveau furniture and jewelry designer, and his wife Teresa Lorioli. His younger brother was a renowned animal sculptor, Rembrandt Bugatti (1884–1916). His aunt, Luigia Bugatti, was the wife of the painter Giovanni Segantini. His paternal grandfather, Giovanni Luigi Bugatti, was an architect and sculptor.
Before founding his automobile manufacturing company Automobiles E. Bugatti, Ettore Bugatti designed a number of engines and vehicles for others. Prinetti & Stucchi produced his 1898 Type 1. From 1902 through 1904, Dietrich built his Type 3/4 and Type 5/6/7 under the Dietrich-Bugatti marque. In 1907, Bugatti became an employee of Deutz Gasmotoren Fabrik, where he designed the Type 8/9.
Bugatti developed the Type 2 in 1900 and 1901, respectively. He developed the Type 5 in 1903. While employed at Deutz, Bugatti built the Type 10 in the basement of his home. In 1913, Bugatti designed a small car for Peugeot, the Type 19 Bébé.
Although born in Italy, Bugatti established his eponymous automobile company in 1909. Automobiles E. Bugatti, in the town of Molsheim in the Alsace region, of what is now France. Automobiles E. Bugatti was known for the advanced engineering of its premium road cars and its success in early Grand Prix motor racing. A Bugatti was driven to victory in the first Monaco Grand Prix.
While displaced from his home in Alsace by World War I, Bugatti designed airplane engines. Between the wars Ettore Bugatti designed a successful motorized railcar dubbed the Autorail Bugatti, and an airplane, the Model 100, which never flew.
Ettore Bugatti’s son, Jean Bugatti, was killed on 11 August 1939 at the age of 30 while testing a Bugatti Type 57 tank-bodied race car near the Molsheim factory. After that, the company’s fortunes began to decline. World War II ruined the factory in Molsheim, and the company lost control of the property. During the war, Bugatti planned a new factory at Levallois in Paris and designed a series of new cars.
Ettore Bugatti was buried in the Bugatti family plot at the municipal cemetery in Dorlisheim near Molsheim in the Bas-Rhin département of the Alsace region of France.