Bugatti EB110 SS

To bring a long-dormant automotive brand back to life is no mean feat; the stakes are even higher when the marque in question is one as hallowed as Bugatti. In the late 1980s, however, Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli rose to the challenge, and while his dream was relatively short-lived, the vehicles he did bring to fruition—the Bugatti EB110 GT and its even more potent evolution, the EB110 Super Sport—can truly be said to have done justice to the legendary nameplate.

After several years of relentless development, and anticipating production success, Artioli went so far as to commission a stylish modern factory for the reborn automaker; its scale spoke to the size of his ambition. Although Artioli’s iteration of Bugatti was located in the high-performance hotspot that is Modena, Italy, rather than Bugatti’s original (and current) home of Molsheim, France, one imagines that Ettore Bugatti himself would have appreciated the scale and grandeur of the impressive, architecturally imposing facility.

Yet the cars produced at that facility would be even more impressive. The first of a planned range of offerings was the EB110, so named in honor of Ettore Bugatti’s 110th birthday. It would be built on a carbon-fiber chassis manufactured by French aerospace concern Aérospatiale. Now common in modern supercars, this advanced composite material was selected because the originally planned aluminum honeycomb was found to be too flexible for use in the ultra-high-performance mid-engine machine. The chassis was wrapped in striking bodywork that, in production form, combined elements of a concept design by Marcello Gandini with refinements by Giampaolo Benedini.

For power, the EB110 GT received a distinctive 3.5-liter quad-turbocharged V-12 paired with a six-speed manual transmission. A finely tuned all-wheel-drive system, yet another forward-looking piece of supercar technology, helped tame its 553 horsepower while ensuring that the EB110 would be as tractable as it was trackable.

Looking to further increase performance, Bugatti announced the EB110 Super Sport at the Geneva Salon in 1992, six months after the launch of the EB110 GT. Through a series of weight-saving and performance enhancements, Bugatti was able to reduce weight by more than 330 pounds while bumping output to a reported 603 horsepower. Its 0–60 sprint is said to have taken just 3.2 seconds, and its stated top speed was 221 mph. Even today, these are jaw-dropping figures.

As with any modern supercar, the EB110, and particularly the Super Sport variant, evolved through a careful series of prototypes, including the important example offered for sale here. This car, chassis PCD39006, is one of just five prototypes created for development of the EB110 Super Sport. Manufactured in early 1993, the car was initially built only as a carbon-fiber frame and roll cage without any mechanical parts, to be used by the United Test and Assembly Center in France for non-destructive homologation tests.
By June 1993, the chassis had been completed and equipped with a two-wheel-drive system. A specially modified engine (numbered 009) was fitted for fuel-homologation testing and to help develop a U.S.-legal EB110. The first group of EB110s had a significant issue with fuel delivery resulting from the car initially having two separate fuel tanks and fillers, one for each bank of the 3.5-liter V-12 engine. This caused the engine to run on only six cylinders if one tank ran dry before the other. Bugatti engineers used the prototype offered here to develop a dual-tank system with a single filler to eliminate this problem.

After its fuel-system testing, PCD39006 was returned to the factory to be retrofitted with an all-wheel-drive system and a new engine. The block for this engine, number 0026, had been used by Bugatti in a different development prototype, GT007, known internally as the C8. After receiving its all-wheel-drive system and engine, PCD39006 was then retained by Bugatti as a factory prototype for use in addressing any ongoing issues with the model. In response to clients’ questions or complaints, Bugatti would look to this car to create suitable solutions which could then be implemented on later models. For this reason, it retains various factory modifications not found on other EB110 prototypes, including its twin-tank system with single fuel filler, a carbon-fiber engine lid cover, and a revised gear selector.

The car would remain with Bugatti as the company hit financial woes in 1995, eventually being sold through bankruptcy proceedings to its first owner in Holland on 12 December 1997. After his purchase, the first owner entrusted German automotive performance company Dauer Racing to bring the car up to legal road standards. After the dissolution of Bugatti, Dauer Racing, considered a foremost authority on the EB110, purchased most of Bugatti’s unused parts and chassis.

In May 1999, the car was acquired by its second owner, who lived in Utrecht, Netherlands. It would change hands again but remain in the Netherlands as part of a private collection for at least another 10 years. By 2015, the EB110 Super Sport was registered in the United Kingdom. In July of that year, it was sent to B-Engineering, the small shop in Campogalliano, Italy founded by former Bugatti employees, specializing in maintenance and restoration of the EB110.

The Bugatti was subsequently entered in various motoring events, including the 2015 Salon Privé, where it won the title of Best Pre-Millenial Supercar, before passing to its next owner in 2018 and became part of a notable private collection in Denmark. It remained there for some years, before being acquired and transported to the United States.

Now presented in stunning concours condition, this exceptionally rare example showed just 3,528 kilometers (2,192 miles) at cataloguing time and is certainly among the finest and most unique EB110s in existence. Finished in factory-correct Grigio Metallic over Blu Scuro trim with bright blue seat belts, the car is documented by its original warranty and service booklet as well as a Bugatti Vehicle Technical Data Sheet and a report by the EB100 Registry. Given its exceptionally low mileage, and use as a factory testbed, this EB110 Super Sport Prototype is a truly remarkable automobile in every sense.