The Art and Science of Driving a Classic Car: A Conversation with a Restorer

As we sit in the cockpit of this beautifully restored 1920s Bugatti, I am reminded of the artisanal craftsmanship that went into building these iconic cars. The hand-formed piece of aluminum on the hood is a testament to the skill of the English wheelman who shaped it by hand. Every rivet that was hammered into place tells a story of the painstaking attention to detail that defined this era of car-building.

The dashboard, with its distributor instead of magneto, may seem like a minor difference to some, but for enthusiasts, it's a reminder that even the smallest components were carefully chosen and crafted to provide the best possible performance. And what better way to experience that than by taking the wheel and feeling the rush of adrenaline as you put this powerful machine through its paces.

Our host takes me on a tour of the engine compartment, pointing out the intricacies of the 2.3-liter engine that powered these cars back in the day. The hand pump for oiling the sump is a nod to the ingenuity of the engineers who designed these vehicles to withstand the rigors of high-speed driving. And as we make our way around the engine, I notice the intricate gearshift mechanism, which serves as a conductor's baton, guiding the driver through the shifting process.

As we head out onto the freeway, I'm struck by the sheer noise and vibration that this car produces – it's like nothing modern cars can match. The sound is music to my ears, and I feel like a conductor leading an orchestra, expertly navigating the gears to coax out the maximum performance from this beautiful machine.

Driving this car is an exhilarating experience that puts you in touch with the raw energy of the road. It's not just about speed; it's about connection – between the driver, the car, and the road itself. As I take turns and push the car to its limits, I feel a sense of freedom that's hard to find in modern cars.

One thing that strikes me is how these cars are designed for driving, rather than just being transportation. The cockpit is an intimate space, with controls and instruments carefully placed to maximize driver engagement. And when you take it up on the freeway, the experience becomes even more immersive – the wind rushing past your face, the engine purring beneath you.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had earlier with our host about starting a special racing series featuring vintage cars like this one. Imagine 10 or 20 classic Bugattis and other legendary cars lined up on the track, ready to battle it out in a thrilling display of speed and style. It's an idea that gets my heart racing – and I think would be an amazing way for new generations of car enthusiasts to experience the thrill of driving these incredible machines.

As we bring the car back around, our host mentions how these replicas are more than just nostalgic nods to the past; they're actually a window into the future. By experiencing what it's like to drive one of these classic cars, young drivers get a chance to connect with their heritage and understand the importance of craftsmanship, innovation, and performance that defined this era.

In conclusion, driving a classic car like this Bugatti is an experience unlike any other. It's not just about speed or style; it's about connection – between the driver, the car, and the road itself. I'm grateful to our host for sharing their passion and expertise with us today, and I hope that future generations will get to enjoy this incredible machine for themselves.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome another episode of jay leno's garage today we're going to talk about uh one of the most legendary marks of bugatti now these are three bugattis that have been on my website before uh that's the only american body bugatti ever made that's a murphy that's a type 37 supercharged and this is also a type 37 supercharged and what's happened with bugatti is they become so rare that a lot of people don't take them out anymore you'll see i have my battery chargers going so i do drive these i bought this car a number of years ago quite a while ago and in the course of owning the car i found out it had been owned by pierre veron the famous race car driver to which the new bugatti veron is named after so now this car has gone up quite a bit in value so what do you do if you like to drive 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 this for all intensive purposes is a type 35 bugatti was not made in france but not made by bugatti it's made by pilsen in argentina you might remember a while ago they did that beautiful alfa romeo here take a look and take a listen oh i got opera well they are now building this one too this is a replica of the type 35 bugatti and by replica i mean that in the truest sense of the word just about every part of an original bugatti has been replicated there's no upgrade to power brakes or none of those things still has the cable brakes still has the straight cut gears the only difference is instead of it being being a roller bearing crankshaft it is a plane bearing crankshaft because let's face it roller bearing crankshafts only last about 5 000 miles and then it's like 20 thousand dollars so it gets a little crazy but we will go through this car but i want you to meet a gentleman who was in charge of per saying john bothwell john is the what sales director what do you call yourself this commercial director commercial director yeah and uh this is a fascinating company they do these just i mean look at this car it's almost unless you're a bugatti expert you would not know that uh that it was not a real car in fact some rather unscrupulous people over the years have tried to sell these as real bugattis and in no way do they try to pass them off as real bugattis you do not they are they are copies but the fun thing is you can drive on them and beat on them hard the way you would have if you bought this car back in 1926. tell us a little bit about the company and tell us how you got started you know the company has a fun history it's basically uh a story on par with what you just described about your type 37 uh they're so valuable a lot of people who would like to own them cannot or if you own them you don't want to drive them it was it was the former in the case of the founder per saying jorge anodon and he was restoring bugatti's uh always wanted one knew he wouldn't be able to have it and so while he had one disassembled he did tooling for it and built himself a bugatti and and that was it he thought it would be a one car project and well it wasn't um we've built hundreds of these literally since then right this all began 30 years ago and uh this is this has become the flagship product of the company in addition to a number of other makes but the type 35 continues to be our most popular car by far right now a real type 35 bugatti a proper one would run you three to five million dollars yeah in today's market in today's market three to five million these run about what you know they're they're all our cars are about ten percent so you're in the in about the 250 range 250 ranges okay each car is built to order so the customer brings his preferences and specifications so there's always fluctuation in the cost but to look at it a different way our cars are roughly the same cost or cheaper than what it would cost to restore an original version right and the interesting thing is argentina's in a rather unusual place and that everything in argentina you're not allowed to import anything everything has to be made there that's correct everything including the tires we have to make everything in-house we do our own tires we have our own foundry cnc shop panel beading leather there's nothing to get shopped out let's uh take you around this car and you can see why people would confuse it with the real thing you know the word replica has been horribly misused you know you've seen these bugatti replicas alleged replicas and they have a volkswagen engine in the back or they're just horrible horrible things whereas this is true to the word replica look at that exactly as the engine would have looked back in the day i mean obviously it's a more modern belt here and as i mentioned before plane bearing crank and internally i imagine it's upgraded a bit with metals that were not available back in the day yeah and and having said that there are real no departures from the performance even the plane bearing crank is an option which although many people elect it's not mandatory we've done cars with roller bearing cranks so basically the customer comes to us and we can upgrade it to whatever degree they want but that never goes beyond a plane bearing crank perhaps a modified firing order and you know if somebody wants a hundred percent mulshine stock car we do that also and we have and the only difference is because bugatti's never had a fan that has an electric fan which of course you need in los angeles traffic right uh it it is pretty amazing well we'll uh take this for a ride in just a minute but uh eight cylinder three valve three valve per cylinder 2.3 liter right uh what's horsepower about 122 some of that uh you know stock these were about 140 horsepower okay and uh our engines are roughly 180 wow when you take into account a different firing order this particular car has a modified firing order on the engine plane bearing crank and then just newer metals right we dyno them between 170 and 180 and it has an electric starter as they did back in the day you can still start it on the crank if you like i don't know why you do that but you you can um four speed transmission straight cut gears look sounds and feels like a proper bugatti uh now there are some of the bugatti club that tend to frown on these a little bit if you have real ones like i do you might be but you know to me anything gets people interested in these cars because let's face it the real ones are getting rarer and rare and pretty soon people won't see them on the streets anymore so to hear it and smell it and feel it come down the road is is a real treat and it's fun to be able to drive it in the way it was intended you know it's a new car so you can jam on the brakes you can slam through the gearbox and if something breaks well i know on mine we've replaced gears and things of that nature everything is available for it uh what does a car weigh uh it's it's roughly uh an 1800 pound car 16 to 1800 um you know that's the stock weight you know with 180 horsepower and that kind of weight and the shortness of the wheelbase roughly 90 inch wheelbase uh it's very nimble it's very agile when you're driving so you're basically experiencing exactly what these were like new out of the factory at mulshine back in the late 20s and here is your supercharger right here that's a supercharger yes and it's funny when you see the factory in argentina it is similar to what bugatti had in france basically a farmhouse with a couple of buildings attached in a rural area right and local artisans building the car that's right yeah pretty neat i mean it has i mean every nut and bolt is a copy there's nothing there's no shortcuts here you know they're using the original you make your own nuts and bolts we make everything in-house and another important aspect to know about our factory is that we're not just trying to duplicate the end product we're actually duplicating the build process that was used back in the late 20s so you can see on the hood you can see all the marks of a hand formed piece of aluminum on an english wheel you can see all the rivets that were hammered by hand the file marks this was something that was very artisan that's how they were in mulshine that's how our cars are and that's why each one is a little bit different than the next yeah yeah very very nice let's uh let's take a look inside the dashboard here in the cockpit rabbit again the only thing different from new is you have a distributor rather than a magneto but magneto's running about 5500 bucks whereas this is what a ford delco type yeah it's it's a it's a v8 v8 okay uh distributor so the the basic assembly of the mag the horseshoe the bosch horseshoe mag is in there there's just a distributor on the right right that cap okay but that being said bugatti type clock we've got any tight gauges this here is a hand pump to pump oil into the sump if you're in a long race and you want to get a little more oil in there that's something that was funny about these cars is that they could go so fast that they ran into a problem that had never been had before which is you would take a turn so quickly all your oil would splash out of the breathers and you'd have to fill it back up so yeah our cars don't need that most of the time but yeah you've got it but it's there and there's your advanced and lever here this is your kai gas what you do is you pump that a few times to shoot a little fuel directly into the carburetor boy these are a lot of fun to drive but you'll see very very few cars give you the visceral sense of driving that these do you know it's a classic case of as much as i like supercars and that type of thing this at 60 or 70 is exhilarating as an f1 mclaren at 200 miles an hour i mean it really well you'll find out you'll see what i mean it's uh the wind in your hair and the smell and you can smell the oil and uh it's just a fantastic car your spouse will probably not want to ride with you but that's okay that's okay this is for you to get out and sunday morning and have some fun so that's what we're going to do right now let's let's take it for a ride starting out there really aren't any modern cars that can match the thrill or driving one of these let's go through the gear oh ah imagine driving this back in 1926 but the model t would rarely go 42 miles an hour that goes 125. now harvard car can make you feel as exciting 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 cockpit and the soles of my shoes are starting to melt but that's okay it's a good kind of heat what an amazing car let's take it up on the freeway and see how it cruises what a noise this thing made you know the gear shift lever is more like a conductor's baton you're sort of conducting the music you know any time you can outrun a new mercedes with an 85 year old race car with 2.3 liters that's a good thing now there are never these first things around that i think you could start a special race series in pebble beach how much fun would that be to see 10 or 20 of these out of race cars battling it you out we've been driving for a while now temperatures stable car running nicely you know a real bugatti you wouldn't drive on a 100 degree day like that but this is not a real bugatti it's a brand new bugatti you know the wonderful thing about these cars is it gives a new generation of people a chance to feel like what renee dreifus if we have our own and what those great race cars race car driving in the it's not like driving one of these things i mean it's amazingly tactile it's such a fantastic car to drive how cool it guys from this century will get a chance to drive and feel what it was like to drive one of the most exhilarating automobiles of the last century you know i really applaud for saying for for building these replicas they're just fantastic whether it's the alpha or the bugatti it's just amazing i want to thank john boswell chris sang and all our friends in argentina for doing such a wonderful job if you really want to get a chance to feel what it's like check out their website bill sang see you next weekwelcome another episode of jay leno's garage today we're going to talk about uh one of the most legendary marks of bugatti now these are three bugattis that have been on my website before uh that's the only american body bugatti ever made that's a murphy that's a type 37 supercharged and this is also a type 37 supercharged and what's happened with bugatti is they become so rare that a lot of people don't take them out anymore you'll see i have my battery chargers going so i do drive these i bought this car a number of years ago quite a while ago and in the course of owning the car i found out it had been owned by pierre veron the famous race car driver to which the new bugatti veron is named after so now this car has gone up quite a bit in value so what do you do if you like to drive 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 this for all intensive purposes is a type 35 bugatti was not made in france but not made by bugatti it's made by pilsen in argentina you might remember a while ago they did that beautiful alfa romeo here take a look and take a listen oh i got opera well they are now building this one too this is a replica of the type 35 bugatti and by replica i mean that in the truest sense of the word just about every part of an original bugatti has been replicated there's no upgrade to power brakes or none of those things still has the cable brakes still has the straight cut gears the only difference is instead of it being being a roller bearing crankshaft it is a plane bearing crankshaft because let's face it roller bearing crankshafts only last about 5 000 miles and then it's like 20 thousand dollars so it gets a little crazy but we will go through this car but i want you to meet a gentleman who was in charge of per saying john bothwell john is the what sales director what do you call yourself this commercial director commercial director yeah and uh this is a fascinating company they do these just i mean look at this car it's almost unless you're a bugatti expert you would not know that uh that it was not a real car in fact some rather unscrupulous people over the years have tried to sell these as real bugattis and in no way do they try to pass them off as real bugattis you do not they are they are copies but the fun thing is you can drive on them and beat on them hard the way you would have if you bought this car back in 1926. tell us a little bit about the company and tell us how you got started you know the company has a fun history it's basically uh a story on par with what you just described about your type 37 uh they're so valuable a lot of people who would like to own them cannot or if you own them you don't want to drive them it was it was the former in the case of the founder per saying jorge anodon and he was restoring bugatti's uh always wanted one knew he wouldn't be able to have it and so while he had one disassembled he did tooling for it and built himself a bugatti and and that was it he thought it would be a one car project and well it wasn't um we've built hundreds of these literally since then right this all began 30 years ago and uh this is this has become the flagship product of the company in addition to a number of other makes but the type 35 continues to be our most popular car by far right now a real type 35 bugatti a proper one would run you three to five million dollars yeah in today's market in today's market three to five million these run about what you know they're they're all our cars are about ten percent so you're in the in about the 250 range 250 ranges okay each car is built to order so the customer brings his preferences and specifications so there's always fluctuation in the cost but to look at it a different way our cars are roughly the same cost or cheaper than what it would cost to restore an original version right and the interesting thing is argentina's in a rather unusual place and that everything in argentina you're not allowed to import anything everything has to be made there that's correct everything including the tires we have to make everything in-house we do our own tires we have our own foundry cnc shop panel beading leather there's nothing to get shopped out let's uh take you around this car and you can see why people would confuse it with the real thing you know the word replica has been horribly misused you know you've seen these bugatti replicas alleged replicas and they have a volkswagen engine in the back or they're just horrible horrible things whereas this is true to the word replica look at that exactly as the engine would have looked back in the day i mean obviously it's a more modern belt here and as i mentioned before plane bearing crank and internally i imagine it's upgraded a bit with metals that were not available back in the day yeah and and having said that there are real no departures from the performance even the plane bearing crank is an option which although many people elect it's not mandatory we've done cars with roller bearing cranks so basically the customer comes to us and we can upgrade it to whatever degree they want but that never goes beyond a plane bearing crank perhaps a modified firing order and you know if somebody wants a hundred percent mulshine stock car we do that also and we have and the only difference is because bugatti's never had a fan that has an electric fan which of course you need in los angeles traffic right uh it it is pretty amazing well we'll uh take this for a ride in just a minute but uh eight cylinder three valve three valve per cylinder 2.3 liter right uh what's horsepower about 122 some of that uh you know stock these were about 140 horsepower okay and uh our engines are roughly 180 wow when you take into account a different firing order this particular car has a modified firing order on the engine plane bearing crank and then just newer metals right we dyno them between 170 and 180 and it has an electric starter as they did back in the day you can still start it on the crank if you like i don't know why you do that but you you can um four speed transmission straight cut gears look sounds and feels like a proper bugatti uh now there are some of the bugatti club that tend to frown on these a little bit if you have real ones like i do you might be but you know to me anything gets people interested in these cars because let's face it the real ones are getting rarer and rare and pretty soon people won't see them on the streets anymore so to hear it and smell it and feel it come down the road is is a real treat and it's fun to be able to drive it in the way it was intended you know it's a new car so you can jam on the brakes you can slam through the gearbox and if something breaks well i know on mine we've replaced gears and things of that nature everything is available for it uh what does a car weigh uh it's it's roughly uh an 1800 pound car 16 to 1800 um you know that's the stock weight you know with 180 horsepower and that kind of weight and the shortness of the wheelbase roughly 90 inch wheelbase uh it's very nimble it's very agile when you're driving so you're basically experiencing exactly what these were like new out of the factory at mulshine back in the late 20s and here is your supercharger right here that's a supercharger yes and it's funny when you see the factory in argentina it is similar to what bugatti had in france basically a farmhouse with a couple of buildings attached in a rural area right and local artisans building the car that's right yeah pretty neat i mean it has i mean every nut and bolt is a copy there's nothing there's no shortcuts here you know they're using the original you make your own nuts and bolts we make everything in-house and another important aspect to know about our factory is that we're not just trying to duplicate the end product we're actually duplicating the build process that was used back in the late 20s so you can see on the hood you can see all the marks of a hand formed piece of aluminum on an english wheel you can see all the rivets that were hammered by hand the file marks this was something that was very artisan that's how they were in mulshine that's how our cars are and that's why each one is a little bit different than the next yeah yeah very very nice let's uh let's take a look inside the dashboard here in the cockpit rabbit again the only thing different from new is you have a distributor rather than a magneto but magneto's running about 5500 bucks whereas this is what a ford delco type yeah it's it's a it's a v8 v8 okay uh distributor so the the basic assembly of the mag the horseshoe the bosch horseshoe mag is in there there's just a distributor on the right right that cap okay but that being said bugatti type clock we've got any tight gauges this here is a hand pump to pump oil into the sump if you're in a long race and you want to get a little more oil in there that's something that was funny about these cars is that they could go so fast that they ran into a problem that had never been had before which is you would take a turn so quickly all your oil would splash out of the breathers and you'd have to fill it back up so yeah our cars don't need that most of the time but yeah you've got it but it's there and there's your advanced and lever here this is your kai gas what you do is you pump that a few times to shoot a little fuel directly into the carburetor boy these are a lot of fun to drive but you'll see very very few cars give you the visceral sense of driving that these do you know it's a classic case of as much as i like supercars and that type of thing this at 60 or 70 is exhilarating as an f1 mclaren at 200 miles an hour i mean it really well you'll find out you'll see what i mean it's uh the wind in your hair and the smell and you can smell the oil and uh it's just a fantastic car your spouse will probably not want to ride with you but that's okay that's okay this is for you to get out and sunday morning and have some fun so that's what we're going to do right now let's let's take it for a ride starting out there really aren't any modern cars that can match the thrill or driving one of these let's go through the gear oh ah imagine driving this back in 1926 but the model t would rarely go 42 miles an hour that goes 125. now harvard car can make you feel as exciting 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 cockpit and the soles of my shoes are starting to melt but that's okay it's a good kind of heat what an amazing car let's take it up on the freeway and see how it cruises what a noise this thing made you know the gear shift lever is more like a conductor's baton you're sort of conducting the music you know any time you can outrun a new mercedes with an 85 year old race car with 2.3 liters that's a good thing now there are never these first things around that i think you could start a special race series in pebble beach how much fun would that be to see 10 or 20 of these out of race cars battling it you out we've been driving for a while now temperatures stable car running nicely you know a real bugatti you wouldn't drive on a 100 degree day like that but this is not a real bugatti it's a brand new bugatti you know the wonderful thing about these cars is it gives a new generation of people a chance to feel like what renee dreifus if we have our own and what those great race cars race car driving in the it's not like driving one of these things i mean it's amazingly tactile it's such a fantastic car to drive how cool it guys from this century will get a chance to drive and feel what it was like to drive one of the most exhilarating automobiles of the last century you know i really applaud for saying for for building these replicas they're just fantastic whether it's the alpha or the bugatti it's just amazing i want to thank john boswell chris sang and all our friends in argentina for doing such a wonderful job if you really want to get a chance to feel what it's like check out their website bill sang see you next week\n"