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Click here for sample pages.
Bugatti: The Italian Decade
by Gautam Sen
NOW AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE.
When, in 1987, Romano Artioli and his high-profile associates – Ferruccio Lamborghini, Paolo Stanzani and Jean-Marc Borel – decided to reincarnate Bugatti, one of the most famous automotive marques of all time, they had in Ferruccio Lamborghini, Paolo Stanzani and design legend Marcello Gandini, three of the most prominent names in the Italian supercar firmament, suggesting a bright future for the marque.
Eight years later, Artioli’s dream was over. Bankruptcy was declared, the factory was closed, and the beautiful campus reduced to a ghost building. Not even a decade had passed between the first germs of an idea and the end in 1995, yet there are enough ingredients for an exciting action-filled story: discord, rivalry, pride, power, money, prestige, stars, crises and a dramatic end.
What happened? Why did it happen? Bugatti: The Italian Decade answers all that and more.
- 400 pages
- Hard cover with dust jacket
- 219mm x 304mm (portrait format)
- 790 images
- Author: Gautam Sen
Thank you, Jürgen Lewandowski for the review in the MotorWorld Bulletin.
Translated text:
Ettore Bugatti was Italian, but lived his life in France, where the legendary company came to an end after the Second World War. There was another attempt to revive Bugatti, but it failed. It would take until 1990 before the Italian Romano Artioli revived the brand and had an impressive new Bugatti built - and at the same time had a correspondingly futuristic production facility built in Campogalliano.
At the time, the EB 110 was far ahead of its peers with its 3.5-liter twelve-cylinder engine with five-valve technology, four overhead camshafts, four turbochargers and all-wheel drive - even the basic version produced 50 hp or 411 kW at 8,000 rpm. And the EB 110 SS even provided its buyers with 611 hp (450 kW) at 8,250 rpm. However, the career of the mid-engine car was not a good one, because Ferrari launched a competitor with the F40, of which no fewer than 1,315 examples were sold. And then there was the Porsche 959, which also made history. In 1995, Romano Artioli's Bugatti dream was over and he sold the brand to the VW Group - and Ferdinand Piëch created the Veyron with 16 cylinders.
Gautam Sen has dealt with the Italian decade of the Bugatti house and has read a lot of existing literature, conducted interviews and also collected pictures of the competitors at the time from his large archive. The result is an interesting journey through time through the super car era of that time, in which exotic cars such as the Jaguar XJ 220, the Cizeta Moroder and the Edonis also find their place. A good overview of the automotive madness of the 90s - but the real Artioli Bugatti story still needs to be told.
Thank you, Thomas for the review in Octane Germany.
 Octane Germany Sept 2023.jpeg)
Click on the image to view at full size.
Translated text:
From the very beginning, it was a mammoth task and a calculation with many unknowns that Romano Artioli had set himself. In the 1980s, the Italian entrepreneur ran one of the largest Ferrari dealerships in the world in Bolzano. And he had set his sights on reviving the legendary Bugatti brand as an Italian rather than a French manufacturer, with a new, futuristically styled factory near Modena and a super sports car instead of a more obvious luxury GT. With Paolo Stanzani, who had come from Lamborghini, as CEO and head of engineering, and star designer Marcello Gandini as the most important obstetricians, he went into 1987 full of euphoria - only eight years later his factory lay in ruins. Gautam Sen, who knew and still knows many of the people involved from personal encounters, describes the rise and fall of Automobili Bugatti in all its twists and turns, in the end in the style of a business thriller.
The first friction began with the decision to scrap the design submitted by Gandini because, according to Artioli, it was too sharp-edged and Lamborghini-like. Instead, the architect of the Fabricca Blu designed the EB110, now much rounder and with a tiny horseshoe logo on the front. Next, Stanzani was forced to leave due to unspecified mischief over majority shares and was replaced by Nicola Materazzi, father of the Ferrari F40. Later, Ferrari legend Mauro Forghieri took his place at short notice. As more and more dark clouds gathered, even Artioli parted with his shares, to buy into Lotus in 1994. Even the stillborn EB112 luxury saloon and a half-hearted motorsport programme could not prevent the company from going downhill - in 1995 it was over. Sen sees the reasons for the failure as a mixture of lack of capacity, fluctuation among the management, US luxury taxes, high maintenance costs and suppliers who no longer sent anything because of outstanding invoices. At the same time, the EB110 was facing strong competition from new supercars like the McLaren F1. Artioli declined Sens' request for an interview - because he wanted to write his own book.
Thank you, Sabu Advani, for your SpeedReaders review.
Click image for full review.
Magnetti Review, June 2023
Motor Sport Review, June 2023
Click on the image to view at full size.
Classic Cars Review, June 2023
Click on the image to view at full size.
Thank you, Pete Vack, for the review on VeloceToday.com
READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE: https://velocetoday.com/bugatti-the-italian-decade-a-review
Thank you, Classic & Sports Car France, for the nice review on your Facebook page:
The history of the Bugatti brand has been the subject of many works, but they are limited to the Ettore Bugatti period. For the first time ever, a book will focus exclusively on the rebirth of the Builder (and the launch of the EB110) under Romano Artioli. To make this work, Gautam Sen took advantage of opening the builder's archives and interviewed a large number of cast members of this astonishing saga.
"Bugatti, The Italian Decade" by Gautam Sen, Dalton Watson Fine Books (English text, 400 pages, 790 photos)
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Author Biography
Gautam Sen
Internationally acknowledged as the leading automotive journalist and writer in India, having founded the country’s first newsstand car magazine Indian Auto in 1986, Gautam Sen also launched Auto India in 1993, which became India’s best-selling car magazine ever. Later he also launched the Indian editions of auto motor and sport and BBC’s TopGear magazine. Since 2007 Sen has been back in the driver’s seat at Auto India and has been dividing his time between Paris, where his family lives, and Mumbai.
Though less publicized, Sen has also been directly involved with the automobile industry in India and Europe, beginning with his first automotive job at Maruti Udyog Limited, India’s leading carmaker, and then subsequently consulting at various levels in the areas of technology, design, product development, marketing and joint ventures, and in the process, interacting with the likes of Hero Motors, Hindustan Motors, Ideal Jawa, Mahindra & Mahindra, San Motors, Tata Motors, and TVS-Suzuki. Sen also lead the design and development of India’s first sports car, the San Storm.
Whilst working on design and development projects, Sen has worked with eminent designers such as Gerard Godfroy, Tom Tjaarda and Marcello Gandini.
Sen has authored several critically acclaimed books on automobiles: The Maharajas & Their Magnificent Motor Cars (published in French by E.T.A.I., in English by Haynes Publishing and in German by Heel), The Car Design Book, Rolls-Royce 17EX A Fabulous Destiny, and A Million Cars for a Billion People, other than co-authoring The Story of the Star in India and The Royal Udaipur RR GLK 21.
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