Above: Before the opening....
Below: Before looking at the exhibition itself, I went to see the rest of the museum, interesting in it's own right, especially due to the 5 Bugatti designs on show. Yes, I do count the Peugeot Bebe!
Above, apart from the Peugeot, there are two T40's, one with a very interesting two-seater body (the yellow one). There is a T49 two-door coupe, and of course the Brown-designed T57. It is said that this car does not have it's Bugatti chassis anymore.
Note the way of mounting the spare tyre on the Peugeot!
Below: The 1:5.5 model of the Bugatti 100P, beautifully displayed. I spent most of the afternoon talking to the builder, Dominique Mathern.
Another model was a T41 Royale chassis in 1:8 scale, beautifully made and showing all the details that one usually does not see, not on the Royale downstairs either.
Above: In my opinion the showpiece of the exhibition; a very original and nice early T13, almost 100 years old! Chassis 497.
The Contrast with the line-up of New Bugattis could not be bigger. There's a EB110, "the other" EB112, the one that was constructed later in Monaco, using spare parts from the factory. Should we call this a replica also?
The, a line-up of Bugatti SAS prototypes. The EB118, the four-door EB218, and the EB18-3 Chiron.
Of course no Bugatti exhibition nowadays would be possible without one of the Veyron's. Here there were more than 4 million worth of them, one regular Veyron, the FbG by Hermes, and a Grand Sport Roadster
Of course, the exhibition being in Belgium, there were some Bugattis with true Royal Belgian history. The Type Baby belonged to Prince Boudewijn and the T56 to Queen Elisabeth, both electric Bugattis.
More Belgian Bugatti history in the body built by D'Ieteren Freres, a faux cabriolet on Type 44 chassis to Weymann License, and a very beautiful 4-seat Coupe by Albert D'Ieteren on Type 57, a car I had not seen before.
Descendant Roland D'Ieteren is the current importer of the new Bugattis in Belgium, and co-organized the exhibition.
There were nice postwar Bugattis, both a T101 as well as the T251!
A couple of Type 43's, the second (brown) one has a very interesting body (chassis 43290)
Any exhibition of course needs a line-up of GP's!
And of course a series of examples of bodies on Type 57 and Type 57S, many of them Bugatti bodies.
One very nice Type 43, with T55-style body by Figoni & Falaschi.
Below: a pair of 4-cylinder Type 40's, one with an interesting Fiacre coupe body, Ettore's favourite style.
Not often seen: The Type 32 Tank from 1923.
Two interesting Brescia's.
Below: Eric van Esser's type 35 Roadster.
Below; a view overviews over the exhibition.
Roland d'Ieteren organized a magnificent exhibition, well worthy of a visit. These days, such an exhibition can not be organized almost without using replica (bodies) to show some of the Bugatti history. I'm not sure of the GP Bugattis, some of the replica's were the T50 Profilee, the T55 roadster (take a look at the dashboard picture, this car did only 1km since new! At least two T57 replica's; the Brown Gangloff coupe and the red/black roadster, both to original designs.
Then of course the T57S Atlantic and Roadster replica's. Also the T57G LeMans racer is not the original car. Then of course the T59 is a replica, as well as the John Barton built Type 252 roadster. Of course the Royale also is a replica, though using as many original parts as the Schlumpf brother's, and later the Mulhouse museum, could find.
