Filed under: Gadgets, Time Warp, Bugatti, Toys
Child's Play: recreation 1927 Baby Bugatti
As long as there are people out there willing to spend the money, the automotive industry will always offer increasingly expensive cars to satisfy them. And because the obscenely wealthy have kids, too, there will always be more costly ways to spoil them. So if the pedal cars we brought you last month just won't do the trick, here's a throwback that is bound to.
This reproduction 1927 Baby Bugatti Type 52 isn't actually a miniaturization of a full-size car. It's a retro recreation of the Baby Bugatti that Ettore actually offered to the scions of industry and princes of Europe in the late 1920s. Only 499 were said to have been made, and all were capable of running around the mansion grounds at around 10 mph. This recreation was modeled on one example of the original purchased at auction. It measures about six and a half feet long and is hand made of aluminum with genuine leather seats and bonnet straps. Although the product isn't licensed by Bugatti, it still costs a very Bugatti-like €6350 (just shy of ten grand in American greenbacks), but is only available for delivery within France and doesn't include the electric motor and wiring. Your kid won't need a driver's license to use it, but he or she will need to learn to say "trust fund" first.
[Source: Singulier via Luxurylaunches]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
993C4S 8:48AM (1/28/2008)
I love these "Baby Bugatti's". What amazing is that this was actually a "production" vehichle meant to be this size vs. a reproduction of something on the road. Here's a Bugatti type 44GS for sale (full size) http://www.paulrussell.com/classic-cars-for-sale/G_b_Type-44_GS/index.php that is very similar to the example in this post.
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Andrew 9:54AM (1/28/2008)
No joke, beautiful timeless car.
Dan from Delaware 8:52AM (1/28/2008)
I know it's a lot of money, but that thing is sweet.
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Narconethree 10:26AM (1/28/2008)
Actually I can get these quite easily. They are made by a company called Authentic Models. Anyone interested let me know.
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rgseidl 12:27PM (1/28/2008)
This is admittedly expensive but remove the pedals and stick in a decent PMSM motor plus some modern batteries and you'd have quite the head-turner, at least if you're under 5' tall and the sun is out.
Unfortunately, the top speed would have to be electronically limited to just 25mph to qualifies as an NEV. Any more on a four-wheeled vehicle and you'd have to conduct crash tests.
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Paul P. 3:06PM (1/28/2008)
A friend of mine, who's father was a car collector, has an original Baby Bugatti sitting in his house. It's actually in pieces right now, as he is trying to restore it, but it's still a neat little car. Plus he likes keeping it because he can say he owns a real Bugatti. ;-)
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Ron 9:54PM (2/05/2008)
I actually drove a Baby Bugatti as a young man, sometime in the 60's. The older brother of a friend of mine found a garage where two of them had apparently languished for years...and he bought one from the people who then owned the garage. The car was amazing to us, but we really didn't know what to make of it. At some point, someone added a lawnmower engine to it so we could drive it, which we did, on some seldom used country roads. It was a beautiful piece of machinery, in the classic Bugatti blue.
The sad part (it still pains me 40 years later...) is that, at some point the motor caught on fire and the thing burned. Or so I was told...though I was never really sure. They claimed they "buried it" in their yard, but that sounded very weird.
In any event, it was a magical couple of weeks...and perhaps it fueled my lifelong obsession for classic cars.
My only hint as to who could have owned such an amazing car is that John Jacob Astor had lived in our town...and he would have had the money and means to buy such a vehicle...
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