‘Bugattis encapsulate concepts of engineering which, once seen, change your ideas radically and definitively.

Drive them, and you realise that each car is form and engineering in equilibrium, and a work of art.’ – William Stobbs, Les Grandes Routières.

By the early 1930s Ettore Bugatti had established an unrivalled reputation for building cars with outstanding performance on road or track; the world’s greatest racing drivers enjoying countless successes aboard the Molsheim factory’s products and often choosing them for their everyday transport.

Introduced in 1922, the Type 30 Bugatti has a special place in motoring history, for it was the first small ‘straight-eight’ to go into production and the first to use Bugatti’s classic single-overhead-cam engine, one of the most famous automobile power units of all time.

Typical of the time, the Bugatti ‘eight’ was a ‘long-stroke’ design of 60x88mm bore/stroke for a capacity of 1,991cc.

The three valves per cylinder were operated by single...