A Bugatti that was nearly written off in 1994 has sold for £3.8 million

The sports convertible from Bugatti’s golden age was bought by a Swiss Bugatti collector after a three-way bidding battle, a highlight of the Bonhams Les Grandes Marques du Monde sale which overall netted €20m to make it Bonhams’ most valuable-ever sale at the Grand Palais.

That such a car was so sought-after was no surprise since even by Bugatti standards this T55 stood out for all the right reasons, despite its occasional mishap. One of only 29 survivors of this type, it began life as a works racer – it is powered by only a mildly detuned supercharged grand prix engine after all – and at Le Mans in 1932 it was driven by the future French champion Louis Chiron. Later it got a new body more suitable for grand touring from renowned Parisian coachbuilder Giuseppe Figoni.

For 56 years until his death the Bugatti was owned and enthusiastically driven by Britain’s leading Bugatti enthusiast and racer, Geoffrey St John. The sale was the first time the historic machine had ever been offered at auction, and as Bonhams’ Philip Kantor said, “It presented a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy one of the most important examples of the golden age of automotive craftsmanship and performance.”

Not all the Bugattis in the sale – and there were seven of them – went for millions. For collectors with the same discerning taste but less deep pockets there was a 1927 Type 40 Grand Sport roadster which sold for €333,500 (£282,000) and a 1913 Type 13 Sports which went for €184,000 (£155,000), all prices including the premium. 

Waving the Union flag in this very French sale was an Invicta – a 1931 4.5-litre S-Type which sold for €1.6m (£1,362,510) to set a world record for the Invicta marque at auction. The model’s great claim to fame when the S-Type was unveiled at Olympia in 1930 was its under-slung chassis with rear axle above the  frame rather than below it. It not only made the Invicta one of the finest pre-war sports cars thanks to its much lower centre of gravity, but gave it a low-slung look that’s contemporary even today.

The world-record Invicta in the Bonhams sale has Carbodies coachwork that is still, almost 90 years on, completely unrestored, as is the interior and big six-cylinder Meadows engine. The new owner of this splendid machine got vintage patina by the bucketload…

Other big-money cars in demand in Paris this year included a couple of Mercedes – a 1935 500k Cabriolet A sold for €1.6m and a 1963 300SL roadster which went for just over a million euros – and, from the UK, a pretty little 1934 Talbot Brooklands sports racer, winner of the 2013 Flying Scotsman Rally, which made an impressive €879,750.

Just as impressive but in a very different way was the rally-liveried Stratos that sold for €690,000. This was no classic Lancia but a 2019-built homage to it from MAT built on the platform of a Ferrari 430 Scuderia. In an ironic twist, a real Lancia Stratos from 1976, with a presale estimate of “only” €400,000, didn’t find a buyer!

And finally, for the Grand Palais sale what could be grander than a Louis Vuitton picnic set. Dating from 1906 and complete with all that four people could ever need for a very grand picnic, all neatly contained in compartments inside the canvas, leather and brass case, the set sold for more than some cars, at almost £20,000.

Images courtesy of Bonhams.