1927 Bugatti Type 35 Pur Sang Replica - Jay Leno's Garage

welcome another episode of jay

leno

's

garage

today we're going to talk about one of the most legendary brands of

bugatti

now these are three

bugatti

that have been on my website before uh that's the only american bodied bugatti ever made that's a murphy it's a supercharged

type

37 and this is also a supercharged

type

37 and what happened with the bugatti's is that they become so rare that many people don't take them out anymore. You'll see I have my battery chargers working so I drive these ones I bought. This car was quite a while ago and while I had it, I discovered that it had been owned by Pierre Veron, the famous racing driver after whom the new Bugatti Veron is named, so now this car has come up.

Quite value, so what do you do if you like driving Bugattis? You like to drive them hard but you don't want to damage a piece of history. Oh, come on, I'll show you that this for all intensive purposes is a type. 35 Bugatti was not made in France but it was not made by Bugatti, it is made by Pilsen in Argentina, you may remember that a while ago they made that beautiful Alfa Romeo here, look and listen, oh I have opera, now they are building this one too. This is a

replica

of the bugatti type 35 and by

replica

I mean that in the truest sense of the word almost every part of an original bugatti has been replicated, there are no upgrades to the power brakes or none of those things still have cable brakes.

It has straight cut gears, the only difference is that instead of being a roller bearing crankshaft, it's a plain bearing crankshaft because let's face it, roller bearing crankshafts only last about 5,000 miles and then cost like 20 thousand dollars, so it gets a little crazy. but we will review this car, but I want you to meet a gentleman who was in charge of say john Bothwell john is the sales director, what is the name of this commercial director, commercial director, yes, and this is a fascinating company. These I just want to say, look at this car, it's almost like, unless you're a Bugatti expert, you wouldn't know it wasn't a real car.

In fact, some unscrupulous people over the years have tried to sell them as real Bugatti and in no way. How do they try to pass them off as real Bugattis? No, they are copies, but the fun thing is that you can drive them and hit them hard like you would have if you had bought this car in 1926. Tell us a little about the company and tell us how you got started. You know the company has a funny history. It's basically a story on par with what you just described about your type 37. They are so valuable that a lot of people would like them. you can't own them or if you own them you don't want to drive them was the first thing in the case of the founder according to what Jorge Anodon said and he was restoring the bugatti uh he always wanted one he knew he couldn't have it and, while he was taking it apart, he he made tools and built a Bugatti and that was it, he thought it would be a one car project and well it wasn't.

We've built literally hundreds of these since then. Well, it all started 30 years ago and, this has become the company's flagship product, apart from other brands, but the type 35 is still by far our most popular car at the moment, a real bugatti type 35, a real one would cost you between three and five million dollars, yes, in today's market, in today's market, between three and five million, these run on what you know they are, all of our cars cost about ten percent, so you are in the range of 250 250 ranges ok every car is made to order so the customer brings their preferences and specifications so there are always fluctuations in cost but if we look at it another way , our cars are about the same cost or cheaper than what it would cost to restore an original. correct version and the interesting thing is that Argentina is in a rather unusual place and that everything in Argentina is not allowed to import anything, everything has to be done there, that is correct, everything, including the tires, we have to do everything at home, we do it ourselves. tires we have our own foundry CNC workshop panel beading leather there is nothing to buy we are going to show you this car and you can see why people would confuse it with the real model, you know, the word replica has been terribly misused, you know?

I've seen these bugatti replicas supposed to be replicas and they have a volkswagen engine in the back or they're just horrible, horrible things, while this is true to the word replica, look at that exactly what the engine would have looked like in the past, I mean , obviously it's Here's a more modern belt and, as I mentioned before, the crank with airplane bearing and internally, I imagine it's been improved a little bit with metals that weren't available in the past, yes, and having said that, there's no real deviations in performance, not even the airplane bearing crank. It is an option that although many people choose, it is not mandatory, we have made cars with roller bearing cranks, so basically the customer comes to us and we can upgrade it to the degree they want, but that never goes beyond a crank with flat bearings, perhaps a modified ignition.

Place your order and you know, if someone wants a 100% mulshine stock car, we make that too and we have that, and the only difference is that Bugatti has never had a fan that has an electric fan, which of course is needed in Los Angeles traffic. Pretty amazing, well, we'll take this for a spin in just a minute, but eight cylinders, three valves, three valves per cylinder, 2.3 liters, what's horsepower? 122 some of that, you know, stock, these were about 140 horsepower, okay, and our engines are about 180 wow if you take into account a different firing order, this particular car has an order of Modified ignition on the plane of the engine that has the crank and then only newer metals, we dynamized them between 170 and 180 and it has an electric start like they had.

In the past, you could still crank it if you wanted. I don't know why you do that, but you can, um, a four-speed transmission, straight-cut gears, sounds and feels like a proper bugatti. Now there are some of the club bugatti that tend to frown on them a little bit if you have real cars like me you might be but you know anything gets people interested in these cars because let's face it the real ones are getting rarer and rarer and very soon the people. I won't see them on the streets anymore, so hearing, smelling and feeling it on the road is a real treat and it's fun to be able to drive it as intended.

You know it's a new car. you can get stuck on the brakes, you can hit the gearbox and if something breaks, I know in mine we have replaced gears and things of that nature, everything is available for that, how much does a car weigh, about 1800 pounds. 16 to 1800 um car, you know, that's the original weight, you know, with 180 horsepower and that kind of weight and the short wheelbase, about 90 inches of wheelbase, uh, it's very agile, it's very snappy when you drive so you're basically experiencing exactly what these new ones were like coming out of the mulshine factory in the late '20s and here's your supercharger right here that's a supercharger yeah and it's funny when you see the factory in Argentina, it's similar to the one Bugatti had in France, basically a farm with a couple of attached buildings in a rural area and local craftsmen building the car, that's right, yeah, pretty clean, I mean every nut and bolt is a copy, there's nothing, there's no shortcuts here, you know they're using the original that you make. your own nuts and bolts, we do everything in-house and another important thing to know about our factory is that we are not only trying to duplicate the final product, we are actually duplicating the construction process that was used in the late 20's , from what you can see on the hood you can see all the marks of a piece of aluminum formed by hand on an English wheel you can see all the rivets that were hammered by hand the marks of the file this was something that was very artisanal so they were at mulshine that's what our cars are like and that's why each one is a little different from the next, yes, yes, very, very nice, let's take a look inside the dashboard here in the rabbit cabin again.

The only thing different from the new thing is that you have a distributor. than a magneto, but the magneto is about $5,500, whereas this is what a Ford Delco type is, yeah, it's a v8 v8, okay, uh, dealer, so the basic charger assembly, the horseshoe, the bosch horseshoe charger is there, there is only one distributor on. to the right, to the right, that cover is fine, but that said, bugatti type watch, we have tight gauges. This is a hand pump to pump oil into the crankcase if you are on a long run and want to get a little more oil.

A funny thing about these cars is that they could go so fast that they ran into a problem that had never been had before: you would turn so fast that all the oil came out of the vents and I have to refill it, so yeah, our cars they don't need it most of the time, but yeah, you have it, but it's there and there's your advance and lever here, this is your kai gas, what you do is pump it a few. times to shoot some fuel straight into the carburetor, boy these are a lot of fun to drive, but you'll find very few cars give you the visceral feeling of driving, you know that's a classic case of everything I like? supercars and that kind of stuff, this at 60 or 70 is exciting like a mclaren f1 at 200 miles an hour, I'm serious, you'll find out, you'll see what I mean, it's the wind in your hair and the smell and you can smell the oil and it's just a fantastic car that your spouse probably won't want to ride with you, but okay, okay, this is for you to go out on Sunday morning and have fun with, so that's what we're going to do. right now let's take it for a spin, starting off there really aren't any modern cars that can match the excitement or driving one of these let's check out the ride oh ah imagine driving this back in 1926 but the model t would rarely make it to 42 . miles per hour going 125.

Now the Harvard car can make you feel as exciting as it's 100 degrees here in Los Angeles today and there's no insulation between you and the engine, so probably 140 degrees in this cabin and the soles of my shoes are starting to melt. but it's okay, it's a good kind of hot, what an amazing car, let's take it out on the highway and see how it drives. What a noise this thing made. You know the shifter is more like a driver's baton. You are driving the music, you know, at any time you can leave behind a new Mercedes with an 85 year old racing car with 2.3 liters, that's a good thing, now there are never these first things that I think you could start a series of special races at Pebble Beach.

How fun would that be? That's seeing 10 or 20 of these cars out of the race fighting you. We've been driving for a while. The temperatures are stable. The car runs very well. It's not a real bugatti, it's a new bugatti, you know, the wonderful thing about these cars is that they give a new generation of people the opportunity to feel what renee dreifus if we had ours and what those great racing cars drive It's not like driving one of these things, I mean, it's incredibly tactile, it's a fantastic car to drive, how cool, the kids of this century will have the opportunity to drive and feel what it was like to drive one of the most exciting cars. of the last. century, you know, I really applaud you for saying for building these replicas, they are just fantastic, whether it's the alfa or the bugatti, it's just incredible.

I want to thank john boswell, chris

sang

and all our friends in argentina for doing such a wonderful job. I really want to have the opportunity to feel what it's like. Visit their website. Bill Sang. See you next week.