Last but not least, it was the first car chosen by a young Formula 1 legend.
When Ace Hood, Rick Ross and Future famously said, “I woke up in a new Bugatti,” they naturally talked about the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, a $ 1.2 million car by Ace’s own estimate. Little did Ace, Ross or the rest of the world know, the Veyron supercar had an even rarer and lesser-known predecessor. A predecessor whose value in the worst case matches the Veyrons and in the best case even exceeds it.
Last but not least, it was the first car chosen by a young Formula 1 legend.
An international revival of the Bugatti brand
via Classic Driver
Bugatti is one of those automobile names that has been around for almost as long as the automobile itself. For most of its existence, it was a French company that built high-quality luxury and racing cars for wealthy customers. The original iteration of the Bugatti name was discontinued in the early 1960s. Until an ambitious Italian entrepreneur named Romano Artioli acquired the intellectual property rights to the defunct French luxury brand.
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The company’s only production was a four-turbo V12 powered all-wheel drive monster of a supercar that was the fastest car in the world, at least for a short time, just like the Veyron. At full acceleration, the EB110 could soar to 218 mph in a later model Supersports kit.
Higher quality than the Jaguar XJ220
Of course, the other early ’90s supercar that most people compare the Bugatti to is the rally-powered Jaguar XJ-220. In fact, the Jag and Bugatti were aimed at the same ultra-rich customers. Additionally, initial plans for the XJ220 included a V12 all-wheel drive setup that was not that dissimilar to that of the EB110.
The preferred drive of the Formula 1 license fee
This is where the similarities between Bugatti and Jaguar end. The Bugatti was the much more sophisticated and better built automobile, as its most famous owner Michael Schumacher showed by making it his favorite car.
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A famous anecdote about the EB110 and possibly the most famous racing driver of all time comes shortly after he bought a bright yellow copy in 1992. His then Benneton F1 teammate was the future Fifth Gear presenter Martin Brundle, who gave Schumacher the brand new super sports car for an explosion on the streets of southern France around the Paul Ricard test track. Brundle walked away from the experience of finding the Bugatti’s complex quad-turbo engine a bit “weird” and “a bit lazy” on public roads where the turbos didn’t have time to really rev up.
Via: LS2.com
A decade later, in 2003, Brundle got the chance to put the EB110 on the track to really stretch his legs. On the open track, Brundle finally understood why his colleague preferred the Bugatti to any other car he could have wished for. Even if the EB 110 was hardly noticeable due to its cracking economy in the 90s and was overtaken by the Mclaren F1 fairly quickly, the Bugatti had a seal of approval that cannot be obtained from any other super sports car. That alone makes the EB10 at least as valuable as the Veyron, it’s just a fantastic car in itself.
Sources: Fifth gear
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About the author
Benny Kirk
(241 published articles)
Ben Kirk is a recent graduate from the State University of New York in the Purchase School of Journalism with a major in Political Science. Ultimately, he found that it would be a lot less depressing to write about cars. When he’s not working as a feature writer for hotcars.com, he’s frantically checking his base 2017 Sentra for new oil leaks or playing on his purpose-built PC.
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