Next round of Autocult - Bugatti and Austin Healey

A couple new releases for February...

1927 Bugatti Type 40 Boattail Speedster

Automobiles whose rear end is reminiscent of a boat in its shape, be it due to a tapered shape, the wooden planking or a keel-like design, are generally referred to as “boattails”. At least one Bugatti of the Type 40 was also dressed with it by a – unfortunately unknown – coach builder, because the Type 40 was built as a sedan with space for four passengers. A special feature was that there was only one entrance door.

The Type 40 was first produced on 25 June 1926 and was intended to be the successor to the Type 23 in the factory chronicle. The front engine was a water-cooled four-cylinder engine with a displacement of just under 1,500cc, which, with an output of 45 hp, resembled the highly-bred sports engine at the time and was derived from the Type 35. The special feature of the design were the valves, because each cylinder received its gasoline-air mixture via two intake valves, while the burnt exhaust gases only entered the exhaust through a single valve. With a maximum speed of up to 125 km/h – depending on the body – the “little Bugatti” was by no means slow for its vehicle class.

Assembly at the Molsheim factory ended in May 1931 after just under 800 units. There are three different figures in the literature about the exact number of produced vehicles, one mentions 765 vehicles, a second specks of 860 vehicles and a third specifies 775 vehicles. Deliveries to Brazil, Tunisia, Australia, Prague or Buenos Aires are known, but especially within France. But it was also available in Germany, at a price of 7,800 RM in 1929.

1956 Austin Healey 100S Streamliner

The Austin Healey 100 of the car conglomerate BMC, which was first presented to the public at the Earls Court Show in 1952, had the number of 100 for the top speed of 100 miles per hour.

Donald Healey continued to develop his sports car with his ‘Donald Healey Motor Company’, decided to get the most out of his design and set out to attack the existing speed record. As the location for this trip, he chose the popular and well-established salt lake of the ‘Bonneville Salt Flats’ in Utah. In addition to the first-class track, there was another reason for the choice, namely that it would make the Austin Healey name and the Model 100 better known in the USA.

In 1953, his team set new records, but this was not enough for Donald Healey. In the summer of 1954, the British finally shipped a specially built car to the USA, but when they arrived at the salt lake in Utah, they found that the surface was in far worse condition than they had expected. Nevertheless, they took their chance and Donald Healey himself, as well as his fellow drivers George Eyston, Carroll Shelby, Mort Goodall, and Roy Jackson Moore achieved new best values in class D over the 5 and 10 kilometer distances in the heavily modified Healey 100. However, the most memorable was the officially stopped speed over a kilometer – 192.6 mph. It was August 22, 1954, and for Donald Healey it was a dream come true.