This review is going to be unfair.
This review will be unfair because I firmly feel that the Bugatti EB110, while undeniably a supercar, is probably the ugliest supercar ever built.
Back before World War II, Ettore Bugatti built the greatest cars in the world. There were others with claims to fame, but when Signore Bugatti announced that his most expensive model, the legendary Royale, would only be offered to those of royal birth, he cornered the market on exclusivity. And then promoted himself, by making his personal car the grandest of them all.
So when a group of Italian and French investors bought the rights to the Bugatti name and trademark, they announced they would build the greatest sports car in the world. Rather a bold statement for upstarts in Ferrari's backyard, but they seemed serious enough.
It had a promising beginning: rumor has it that the initial design was by Marcello Gandini, the same designer who drew the Lamborghini Miura and Countach, among other notable supercars. Gandini has struck out in a few designs (most notably the Cizeta V16T, in my opinion), but this time he didn't have a chance.
He presented his design to the Powers That Be at the new Bugatti Automobili SpA., and was asked to make a few revisions. He grudgingly made some changes, and was asked to make more. Finally they demanded that traditional inverted-horseshoe-shape motif that graced the Bugattis of yore be added the the nose, and he decided enough was enough. "If you want more changes, do them yourself," he is said to have told them. Probably not so politely -- Italian is a colorful language.
So they went ahead and added a number of things to Gandini's design, and took his name off it. Which is just as well -- he is probably happier that way.
And the Bugatti EB110 supercar moved from conception to gestation, with more dubious parentage along the way. Some rumors say that much of the money came from -- let's say, Italian businesses of questionable legality. This let them put in dirty money, and take out clean, untraceable profits. Ecco.
But it did reach production in 1991, in a gleaming new factory in Campogalliano, just outside Ferrari's hometown of Modena, and not far from Sant'Agata, where Lamborghinis are built. Good neighborhood for exotics.
And, except for looks, it had the goods: A tiny (3.5 liter) V-12 engine, mounted amidships, with five valves per cylinder and four turbochargers, producing a phenomenal 560 hp -- over twice the specific output of the Viper's monster V-10! Four-wheel drive kept it from losing much power in wheelspin, and 0-60 came up in 4.5 seconds -- on the way to a top speed of 214 mph.
The factory at Campogalliano geared up to produce about 100 cars per year, most of them the EB110GT, usually in the color called French Blue. The other model was the EB110SS, or SuperSport -- lighter, faster, and usually seen in silver. Unfortunately for those erstwhile investors, and the revived Bugatti, they were unable to sell anywhere near that quantity, and many of the supercars simply sat on the showroom floors. In 1994 bankruptcy ended production with a total of 154 cars built. Gandini, no doubt, found it all hugely amusing.
(This may be partly due to bad timing: in the early 1990's, there were several new names trying to join Ferrari and Lamborghini. Besides Bugatti, we saw Cizeta, Vector, McLaren, and Jaguar's XJ220. Cizeta and Vector never really made it into production; the others all fell well short of their expected sales and are gone today.)
Be that as it may, the EB110 is one of the fastest production road cars ever built, and that makes it notable in the history of automotive (ahem! -- ) design. So, over Gandini's imagined protests, I went ahead and bought Bburago's model of the Last Bugatti. In French Blue, of course.
The profile is aerodynamic enough -- you can't go 200mph without that -- but the overall shape is even shorter and wider than an "average" exoticar. This makes it look rather squat and dumpy, like my ex-wife. (Of course, she only got blue in the face, but that was enough.)
This model (I have to force myself not to call it a "Bbugatti") captures the ugly features of the real car admirably. The inverted-horseshoe motif on the snout. The squeezed-together headlights. The air vents exiting outboard of those headlights. The really undistinguished taillights. The utterly artless side mirrors. The wonky mechanical rear wing. The graceless side air intakes (though those are a Gandini feature). And the little oblong perforations along the rear fascia and the sides of the engine lid -- probably a misguided attempt at emulating the lightening features on Signore Bugatti's original cars.
And finally, the interior described by one journalist at the car's press introduction as "exceptionally banal" -- the kiss of death for an exoticar. The model, in this case, fails to live up to even that standard: the seats aren't badly shaped, but it fails to even try to show seat belts. The burled-wood dashboard is represented by a decal, and the shifter and handbrake look toylike. It does have a headliner, but it doesn't fit smoothly with the windshield, badly knocking the rearview mirror out of alignment.
In all fairness, the model also gave me a view the photos hadn't of some of the remaining grace in the overall shape. I particularly like the elegant way the airflow is pulled over the large backlight and into a duct feeding the rear-mounted radiator. The whole engine lid is itself a fascinating shape, an elegant solution to a complex question.
In addition, there are a few features specific to this model that I like. Like Gandini's most famous offspring, the Countach, the EB110 has doors that open vertically on a leading-edge hinge -- a design variously called "guillotine," "scissors," "jackknife," or (incorrectly) "gullwing" doors. Bburago uses a clever spring arrangement that supports them nicely in the open position, but closes them with a positive snap. Something about this appeals to me.
But there's something about the roof puzzles me: there is a plastic panel in the center -- why? It doesn't look bad, the color match is excellent. But why plastic here? It may have something to do with the little (cell phone?) antenna in the center -- but I would have left that off in the first place. It's too thick in scale, and on my car it's skewed to one side besides.
The single windshield wiper is very good, as such things go.
The steering range is unusually wide and turns easily, and Bburago's annoying self-centering action seems to be lessened on this model. Combined with the short wheelbase, this model would have a nice, tight turning circle.
But there are also several features of the model that I find disappointing. Bburago's quality control seems to have slipped rather badly on my sample, especially when it comes to applying the decals: the reflective surface of one mirror is so skewed that it extends beyond the edge of the "mirror" itself. The "license plate" decal is way off to the left, outside its depression, and is therefore coming off. And there is a small, colorful decal under the front trunklid, on what may represent a battery. Partly on it, that is. I'm going to try removing and remounting them, but I shouldn't have to. (In fairness, since I got it second-hand, I have to say there's a high probability the bad application of the decals is due to someone's inept assembly of a kit. It might not be Bburago's fault.)
There are also a number of small blemishes in the paint -- small enough that they might not be noticed casually, but not up to Bburago's standard. To their credit, they did paint much of the undersurfaces, at least until they got near an edge -- there the paint fades out.
The taillights, in particular, look terrible. They appear to be clear lenses covering a decal with colored areas, rather than appropriately colored lenses. I'd be embarrassed to say I was responsible for them.
Another annoyance is that the car has Bburago's standard exoticar front susension. They didn't even make an effort to portray any of the u-joints, halfshafts, or the front and center differentials that a four-wheel-drive car, even an exotic, has to have. Points off here, too. I was looking forward to seeing that.
And while I'm complaining about the underside (without ever having seen a real one), I might as well step into it all the way. The belly pan is almost featureless -- the most notable feature is the writing telling us Bburago made it. There are three vague outlines of NACA ducts toward the rear, but that's about all. Bburago gave their Viper a magnificent undercarriage -- why can't they do more like that?
The engine on the EB110 is admittedly a difficult one to model well. Bburago takes a pretty good stab at it -- if you turn the car over and look carefully, you can see the four tiny turbochargers, each feeding into three of the V-12's intake runners. But a fair portion of the plumbing visible up above is done in a grey plastic that looks unfortunately like plastic. A little paint on the plastic parts would go a long way here.
By the way, don't bother looking for a transmission -- Bugatti engineered the six-speed into the engine's main case, near the front and bottom. Right where Bburago put the belly pan anyway.
The 18" BBS wheels are not badly modeled -- a little flatter near the hubs, but pretty good overall. But the Michelin tires -- I was unsurprised by now to find that this model also suffers from BGTS: Bburago Generic Tire Syndrome. The symptoms are clear: No matter what the original tire on the original car, the model, if the tires are of the appropriate size, will have tires with the appropriate name on the sidewalls -- and tread patterned after the Pirelli P7 of the '80s -- AND the tire will bulge at the center of its treadwidth. They really ought to take a look at Maisto's Ferrari F50 for an example of how tires should be modeled.
Oh, and by the way: French Blue is a really bad color for an exoticar. It looks like blueberry Pepto-Bismol or something.
[The fact that the wing is down marks mine as a 1992-93 model -- the later ones had the wing in the deployed position.]
To sum it up:
Strengths: Interesting (if undistinguished) history, good representation of a bad shape.
Weaknesses: Inaccurate undercarriage, sloppy quality control, and Bburago's Generic Tires.
Overall: Not Bburago's best, by a substantial margin.
P.S.: I called the EB110 the Last Bugatti toward the beginning of this review. This may eventually prove incorrect: Volkswagen, originally the Peoples' Car, by now has acquired rights to the once-proud Bugatti name and assets, and they are making noises about producing a Bugatti with an 18-cylinder (!!!) engine. They own Lamborghini and Vector, too. Sic transit gloria.
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