Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic By John Lamm
There are many Bugattis that could stop you in your tracks.
One of the oh-so-long hood Royales. An athletic Type 35 Grand Prix car. A modern 16-cylinder Veyron. But there is none with more of a draw than the Atlantics.
It’s the exterior, of course, another of Jean Bugatti’s brilliant designs. It sits low on its surbaissé chassis which means"dropped" or "underslung". Flowing front fenders with a shape that is duplicated by the car’s cabin. Those delightfully drooping side windows. And the spine of double rivets that runs up from the windscreen and over the top, down to the bottom, with similar spines at the fenders’ peaks.
Only a trio of these treasure exist and we present them here.
Originally it was thought the bodies would be made of Elektron, which is too flammable to weld. Hence the many rivets in the Atlantic body. After the decision was made to use aluminum bodies, the rivets remained and are one of the draws of the Atlantics.
Not all Bugattis have the trademark horseshoe-shaped radiator. For all the similarities in the 3 Atlantic’s profiles, their “faces” vary from one to the other.
Atlantics get the “S” after the 57 because they have the lowered “sousbaissé” chassis. Up front is a split beam axle on semi-elliptic springs while at the back is a live axle with quarter-elliptic springs.
Ralph Lauren’s Atlantic was featured at the entrance to his automotive show in Paris in 2011.
Ralph Lauren (right) and restorer Paul Russell on the awards ramp of the 1990 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance after the Atlantic won Best of Show. It has chassis number 57591.
This Atlantic has a supercharged straight-8 making it an SC. The twin-cam engine boasts 3257 cc and is said to produce 200-210 horsepower. The gearbox is a 4-speed manual.
Even the Atlantic’s door opening looks like a piece of sculpture. One of the few complaints drivers have is that the car can get hot inside.
As beautiful as the exterior, the interior boasts features like the thin-rim steering wheel and nautical-looking Jaeger gauges set in fine wood paneling. Can you imagine yourself behind that wheel?
This is the first Atlantic, and its initial owner in 1936 was none other than Lord Philippe de Rothschild. Here it is a bit obscured by the chaff used to celebrate it as Best of Show winner in the 2003 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.
The Rothschild car--chasis 57374--is now owned by Peter Mullin and seen here in his museum in Oxnard, California. Peter D. Williamson had bought the car for a reported $59,000 in 1971 and spent years restoring it to its original configuration. Value today? Likely north of $30 million.
Atlantics are spectacular from any angle as this rear 3/4 demonstrates. The bodies were constructed out of aluminum and here you can see the rows of rivets down its spine.
Controversy swirls around this Atlantic--chassis 57473--which is an unsupercharged 57S. First sold to Jacques Holzschuch, it had some styling modifications by Joseph Figoni and ended up owned in France by Rene Chatard. Sadly, he and a passenger were killed in 1955 when the car was hit by a train.
After the accident, the badly damaged car eventually ended up in a scrapyard where it was found by Paul André Berson, who recreated the car from what was left. It was later restored by Paul Russell to its Figoni-modified form. Russell is seen here driving it onto the lawn at the 2010 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.
John Lamm