Collector gives unfinished 70-year-old Bugatti Type 64 chassis a body

In 1939, Jean Bugatti built three Bugatti Type 64 Coupe chassis but only two of them got bodies since Jean was killed in August 1939 while testing the Le Mans-winning Type 57 C “Tank”. The third chassis remained unfinished for over 70 years till Peter Mullin bought the chassis (No. 64002) and decided to body it the way Jean Bugatti himself would have.

70-year-old Bugatti Type 64 chassis

The noted Bugatti collector bought the chassis with all its original suspension pieces, cast duraluminum firewall and riveted duraluminum frame rails along with a 3.3-liter DOHC straight-eight engine in 2003. The main challenge for the collector, however, was discerning how Jean Bugatti would have made it. Mullin wanted to respect Bugatti’s attention to art and engineering and roped in the help of Pasadena-based Art Center College of Design’s head of transportation design department Stewart Reed who has extensive experience in designing for the likes of Toyota, Jeep and Chrysler.

Since the duo didn’t know much about the Type 64, they decided to use Jean’s original sketches for the papillon (French for “butterfly”) doors that incidentally predated Mercedes’ gullwig door design by around a decade. By studying what Jean Bugatti was doing in terms of automotive design and what was being done in that era, eight Art Center students from the Art Center College were asked to present idea evolved from the Type 57 Atlantic.

In the late 1930s, Bugatti was expanding its use of aluminum and the company was working on a plane as well. This resulted in the chassis and major components of their vehicles from the era using the metal. Going ahead with this theory, the project was given plane-like Acrylic windows, exposed rivets and an aluminum body. The project also uses Jean Bugatti’s butterfly doors.

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70-year-old Bugatti Type 64 chassis

70-year-old Bugatti Type 64 chassis gets a body, the old-fashioned way

Coachbuilder Mike Kleeves from Automobile Metal Shaping was chosen for the construction of the body since he has over three decades of experience in crafting body panels that are no longer available or manufactured. Kleeves’ team are using a General Motors Tech Center original 1940s-vintage hammer press that he salvaged a while ago. The approximate weight of the new body was preloaded to the suspension and a computer-controlled measuring device on a large metal base was used to place the chassis.

An adjacent surface plate was used to construct a water-cut mahogany buck fashioned from Reed's drawings to make sure that all of the parts fit and at any point, precise measurements could be made. To make sure the fit is correct the body panels are moved back and forth from the hammer to the buck. To display both the chassis and the body, the body will be able to be removed in one piece. However, the aluminum body will not be painted and the interior will be left much the way it is now.

Kleeves and his crew are hoping to complete the body before summer and Mullin is hoping to display the vehicle to the public at Pebble Beach later on.

Via: Auto Week