‘With Type 51 power the coupé was a real Q-car, its straight-eight bark announcing its arrival long before it appeared’
The idea of two true Bugatti enthusiasts combining their talents to recreate a long-lost model intrigues me greatly. Respected landscape architect Bruno Lafourcade and artist François Chevalier have shared a passion for all things Molsheim since the ’60s and, no doubt over a fine vin rouge in Lafourcade’s garage beside his 18th-century rural home, the pals dreamt up ideas for Bugattis they’d love to build. Anyone who knows the artist’s wonderful drawings will appreciate his creative twists: be it a Royale-based transporter or a trans-Saharan six-wheeler Type 41, his loose sketches vividly relate these marvellous fantasies.
One lost Bugatti in particular captivated the duo. In the 1920s, racer and Nice Bugatti agent Ernest Friderich created a fascinating coupé based on a Type 37. The compact machine was driven in hillclimbs, but few photographs survive of this one-off. To entertain his friend, Chevalier produced several sketches including ideas for the rear styling, for which no images exist.
A collection of Type 35 parts acquired from renowned Bugatti hunter Antoine Raffaelli eventually became the catalyst for the rebirth of the Friderich coupé in 2008, and top French specialists were enlisted to build the dream machine. “It was always meant as a nod to the car and just a bit of fun,” says Chevalier. To recreate it faithfully around the Type 37 specification sounded too tame, so the project developed into a Bugatti hot rod. Rather than a 1500cc ‘four’, Lafourcade decided on an unsupercharged 2.3-litre twin-cam Type 51 straight-eight, but that externally the car should retain the nimble look of the Friderich coupé with T37 wheels.
Ventoux Moteurs Ingénierie in Carpentras was entrusted with the mechanical side, while a coachbuilder in Le Beausset took on the challenge of skinning the frame. Building a Grand Prix Bugatti body is straightforward in comparison, particularly because the only reference was two photos of the front end. The result was masterful, with a low roof, distinctive mud-deflectors and close-fitting cycle wings. For the back, Chevalier and Lafourcade decided on a tapered petrol tank with a rear-mounted spare. The body had to overhang the narrow chassis, but the proportions looked rakish and pert with curved, carriage-style sills, louvred valances and an extended windscreen visor. The narrow radiator, small Typ
