In the late 1980s, Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli (Born 1932) enlisted designer Marcello Gandini to help create a Bugatti for the 1990s. The move made sense; Gandini was already one of the most respected names in car design and his resume included dozens of cars like the Lamborghini Miura, Lancia Stratos, the first-generation BMW 5 Series and the Citroën BX. Gandini could do it all and he did it well.
The idea wasn’t to make a retro-inspired
car. Unrestrained by heritage, Gandini’s proposal took the form of an angular, wedge-shaped coupe characterized by pop-up headlights and numerous vents. The horseshoe-shaped grille was notably missing. Out back, it wore lights from the Alfa Romeo 164.
Artioli turned down Gandini, something few executives have ever dared to do. He didn’t like the prototype, which was called A35, and instead asked architect Giampaolo Benedini to create the final design. Benedini had never worked as an automotive designer before; his contribution to the Bugatti resurrection was initially limited to drawing the cutting-edge blue factory and the adjacent buildings.
The EB 110 remained wedge-shaped but Benedini made significant changes to the overall design. On paper, however, the two cars were a lot alike. The A35 used a mid-mounted, 3.5-litre V12 tuned to send 552bhp to the four wheels. It had a top speed of 212mph.
