Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti (15 September 1881 – 21 August 1947) was an Italian-French automobile designer and manufacturer. He received French citizenship in 1946 and is remembered as the founder and proprietor of the automobile manufacturing company Automobiles E. Bugatti, which he founded in 1909 in the then German town of Molsheim in the Alsace region of what is now France. Bugatti died in Paris and is buried in Dorlisheim, France.
Family origin and early life
Bugatti was born into an artistic family in Milan, Italy. He was the elder son of Carlo Bugatti (1856–1940), an important Italian Art Nouveau furniture and jewellery designer, and his wife, Teresa Lorioli (1862–1935). His younger brother, Rembrandt (1884–1916), was a renowned animal sculptor. His aunt, Luigia Bugatti, was the wife of the painter Giovanni Segantini. His paternal grandfather, Giovanni Luigi Bugatti, was an architect and sculptor.
Bugatti's father intended that he follow a conventional technical apprenticeship with one of the Milanese tri-/quadricycle manufacturers, but the boy quickly demonstrated a deep instinctive understanding of the wide range of aspects of motor-vehicle construction, and with Prinetti & Stucchi constructed his "Bugatti Type 1" in 1898. Bugatti developed a second prototype, the Type 2, which was a prize-winning exhibit at the Milan Trade Fair in the Spring of 1901.
From 1902 through 1904, De Dietrich built his Type 3/4 and Type 5/6/7, identified at the time with the name "De Dietrich, Licence Bugatti". While working for De Dietrich Bugatti met Émile Mathis. Between the wars Bugatti designed a successful motorized railcar dubbed the Autorail Bugatti, and won a government contract to construct an airplane, the Model 100. It was designed by Louis de Monge using two type 50B Bugatti engines but never flew due to the outbreak of World War II. Surgical instruments, designed by Bugatti for a friend who was a professor at a nearby hospital, are still in use to this day.
Bugatti's son, Jean, 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.
Bugatti's concept of customer relations was somewhat eccentric. To a Bugatti owner who complained that his car was difficult to start on cold mornings, he is said to have retorted, "Sir! If you can afford a Type 35, you can surely afford a heated garage!" Another famous line he told to a customer complaining about the brakes in one model was, "I make my cars to go, not stop!" He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2000.
Personal life
In 1907 Bugatti married Barbara Maria Giuseppina Mascherpa. Afflicted by the after-effects of a stroke, he had for several months been confined to the Paris apartment in the rue Boissière, which he had owned since 1916.