Bugatti: here are the five people that made everything possible

Ettore Bugatti was born in Milan in 1881 to furniture and jewellery designer Carlo Bugatti and his wife Teresa – the whole family was a bit artsy, his uncle a painter and his brother and granddad both sculptors.

Black sheep Ettore was partial to a bit of engineering, building his first car at 17. He worked his way up, designing cars for De Dietrich (he was so young his dad had to co-sign his contract here) and Deutz and founded his own car company in 1909 in Molsheim, Alsace.

He didn’t just design cars – he penned everything from planes and trains to fishing rods and filed around 1,000 patents during his lifetime. Sadly he never managed to bounce back after World War Two.

The third child of Ettore, Gianoberto was the eldest son, born in Cologne in 1909 to Ettore and wife Barbara. When they moved to France Gianoberto soon became Jean, and he combined his father’s engineering prowess with a flair for design, styling bodies for the company’s cars and crafting a look that still influences the company’s output even today.

He took over the running of the company at the age of 27 in 1936, but his life was cut tragically short in 1939 at the wheel of that year’s Le Mans winning Type 57C Tank on roads near the factory. His death was a devastating blow not just for Ettore and the family, but it also left the company without a clear succession in place.

Racer Wimille was born in Paris in 1908 with a keen interest in cars from an early age. His first race at 22 in 1930 was in a Bugatti and by 1932 he was winning regularly. Two years later he got a contract to race as a Bugatti works driver, giving racing credibility to Jean Bugatti’s wild designs.

He’s been hailed as one of the best French drivers who ever lived, and his Le Mans wins in 1937 and 1939 sealed Bugatti’s sporting image, while Wimille worked during the war as an agent for the British Special Operations Executive in Paris, and died at the Buenos Aires GP in 1949.

Honourable mentions to modern drivers Andy Wallace and Pierre-Henri Raphanel who carry the torch in the modern era.

The original Bugatti firm stopped in 1952, a late 1980s Italian backed revival was mildly successful, but it was the formidable Volkswagen Group boss (and grandson of Porsche’s founder) Ferdinand Piëch who nailed the Bugatti revival in 1998, folding it into an ever growing mix with other premium brands such as Lamborghini and Bentley.

There probably won’t be another automotive CEO like him. He bestrode the car industry like a behemoth, one of the few car bosses with the strength of personality to drive a ridiculous car like the 2005 Veyron all the way through from concept to production. The company lost millions, but Ferdinand Piëch was fully committed to this halo engineering project.

Rimac was born in 1988 and grew up in Germany as his family escaped the Bosnian war. They moved to Croatia in 2000, and barely into his late 30s the entrepreneur has reached the top of the car industry despite dropping out of university.

His electric hypercar startup (with a lucrative side business in providing batteries to half the car industry) has been folded in with Bugatti as a joint venture part owned by Porsche, with Rimac in charge of things. 

Some worried that would mean Bugatti losing its soul, but the 8.3-litre V16 hybrid Tourbillon is a worthy riposte, selling out in months. So far so good – and on the plus side there’s no Bugatti SUV on the horizon yet.