Chassis no. ZA9AB01E0PCD39041

*The model celebrating 110th anniversary of Ettore Bugatti's birth
*Highly original with only 14,000 recorded km
*Official Japanese import

"A low-mileage official Japanese import"

The EB110GT was the first newly-introduced model by Bugatti in half a century since 1952. The production, though, lasted only three short years and that made this EB110GT the only model produced by Bugatti Automobili SpA revived by an Italian businessman.

From a historic standpoint, the renowned figures in the supercar business of the era got together to pursue a man's biggest dream of creating the very best supercar.

If not for the EB110GT, there would have been no Bugatti Veyron under the wings of Volkswagen. In any case, its importance in the history of automobiles is unquestionable.

The Bugatti EB110GT is certainly one of the monumental supercars of the 20th century produced as a result of combining all the technology and knowledge available in the 90's.

What Romano Artioli wanted the most as the man in charge was to make his car as technologically advanced as it can possiblly be and decided to aggressively adopt the cutting-edge technology of the era. It was meant to utilize the experience and knowledge of Paolo Stanzani who engineered and designed one of the historic greats, the Lamborghini Countach.

The body structure of the EB110GT is unique but still the most advanced, covering the carbon-fiber monocoque built by an aircraft manufacturer with aluminum body panels.

Its drive system was as advanced as rest of the vehicle, employing the mechanical four-wheel-drive system with a limited slip differential which distributed 27% of its engine power to the front axel and 73% the rear. The system enables the car to make a sharper turn-in and makes a great contribution to the fun of driving.

While its rivals took there-is-no-replacement-for-displacement approach for gaining more power, the EB110GT opted for efficiency by attaching four turbo-chargers to a rather compact 3.5 liter V12 and squeezed out whopping 561ps at 8,000 rpm.

From a dead stop, it reaches 100km/h in mere 3.46 seconds. Even with an abundance of luxury equipments, its performance figures still go head-to-head against today's supercars.

It is not hard to imagine how difficult it was to design a memorial model in order to celebrate the revival of a legendary marque like Bugatti for the first time in 49 years.

The exterior designers of the EB110GT met a difficult challenge of blending a number of classical details with an aerodynamically superb shape. As a result, the car obtained a unique but still perfectly supercar-like appearance which has not lost any of its freshness after all these long years.

There are large-mouthed air intakes just under the gull-wing doors which direct air to the rear brakes. There are fuel caps on both sides of the body because of the fuel supply system operating independently left and right.

The engine room showcases its gem-like V12 motor through the glass cover.

One of a few ideas that the EB110GT shares with the Veyron is the automatically adjustable rear wing.

The "window in window" system is quite a unique feature where a frame divides a window glass into inner and outer parts and only the inner part moves up and down while the outer glass is fixed.

A horseshoe-shaped grill is what made the Bugatti's front fascia stand out from the rest half a century ago and the EB110GT has a small air-intake showing a strong resemblance to the old Bugattis. It has been said that Marcello Gandini, at the final stage of vehicle design, withdrew from the project because he strongly opposed Romano Artioli's firm attitude in adopting this idea. However, this kind of detail is exactly what Artioli paid the most attentions to. It was Zagato of Milano, Italy who made the final modifications to the design after Gandini left.

It is a new interpretation of classic Bugatti's noble image reflected in the modern design.

Looking at the interior tells us that aging properly has the same meaning as always giving us fresh impression after all.

The interior is leather-upholstered from top to bottom and even floor mats are made of leather.

Bugatti's craftsmen used Poltrona Frau leather as the interior material and showcased their expertise and sophistication, especially when they combined grey and navy leathers with white stitches.

The wooden panels remind its driver of premium furniture with their graceful patterns and the leather-wrapped three-spoke steering wheel by Nardi takes us well back into the 90's.

Its interior is unexpectedly roomy for the compact overall length of about 4.1m and has the guest-room quality found in few supercars.

Passenger comfort also had to be top-notch and this example is equipped with digitally-controlled automatic air conditioning and power seats with beautiful controller panels on the sides. The original Nakamichi audio system has been replaced with after-market navigation system.

The exterior paint called Bugatti Blue still retains most of its luster and is in wonderful condition. Gorgeous BBS wheels are also in excellent shape like they have been seldom used.

This individual we introduce here was officially imported by Nicole Racing Japan LLC, the then official importer of Bugatti.

It has stayed in Japan all its life since delivery and only recorded less than 14,000km even after almost quarter of a century has passed. It has just been through a running-in period and is ready for a serious drive.

Because of its short-lived production period of three years, the production number remains around 100, a quarter of that of the late Veyron. To the relief for a potential owner, the low existing number is likely to keep the prices high for coming decades.

"The history of Bugatti's revival"

In 1980's, the story began when four men decided to pursue the same goal of creating a brand-new supercar unlike anything in existence.

It was planned by four of the great figures in the supercar business : Ferruccio Lamborghini, Jean Marc Borel (a director of a financial company ), Romano Artioli ( the owner of the world's largest Ferrari distributer ), and Paolo Stanzani ( ex-chief engineer for Lamborghini ).

Of the four, Artioli especially had a huge ambition to revive the legendary automobile manufacturer Bugatti.

Bugatti's main operation back then was to manufacture aircraft parts after it ceased production of automobiles. People no longer recognized the company as an automobile manufacturer since it was acquired by Hispano-Suiza in 1962.

Finally after two long years of negotiation, Artioli agreed with a mega firm Messier-Hispano-Bugatti to buy their trademark brand of Bugatti. What it meant was that a symbol of French industries had been acquired by an Italian Businessman.

The business quickly picked up its speed from there on, starting to build a mammoth factory with the floor space of 13,000m2 at the beginning of 1988 on

the vast area of 75,000m2 that Stanzani found at Campogalliano at the end of1987.

Stanzani's ideas were preferentially adopted in designing the EB110 GT. For instance, his ideas included the four-wheel-drive system and the compact 3.5 liter V12 with four turbo-chargers. Those were the ideas he always had ever since he designed the Countach.

In addition, the revived Bugatti formed a technical alliance with a number of high-tech companies for the purpose of producing the world's best super-sport cars. Aerospatiale was asked to construct light-weight carbon-fiber space frames, Michelin to develop the tires applicable to the speed over 300 km/h, and Elf to come up with high-spec lubricant.

When it was time to start designing the vehicle in 1989, Stanzani proposed the design condition which was to arrange the engine and transmission side by side within a compact length dimension at 4.1m. Under this condition, four Italian designers were asked to come up with their designs : Paolo Martin, Giorgetto Giugiaro, Nuccio Bertone and Marcello Gandini.

Surprisingly though, Stanzani dropped out of the project in October 1990, as a result of unsolvable disagreement with Artioli.

Nicola Materazzi, best known for his work in developing the Ferrari F40, was hired to replace Stanzani.

With Materazzi's arrival, the development went into the stage where engineers had to achieve the target performance. Aside from performing wind-tunnel exams, they built five prototypes and invited Loris Bicocchi to carry out test drives.

On September 15th, 1990 (Ettore Bugatti's birthday), they celebrated the completion of their new factory. The grand ceremony drew 77 classic Bugattis and the first prototype was presented with a veil on in front of the invitees. The first public presentation went so well that it gave Artioli strong hope for success.

Then on September 15th, 1991, exactly 110 years after Ettore Bugatti was born, the Bugatti EB110 made its debut simultaneously at both the Palace of Versailles and newly-completed Grande Arche, also called Arc de Triomphe of the 20th century.

The name EB110 comes from the initial of Ettore Bugatti and his 110th birthday.

The presentation speech by Artioli was nothing but a showcase of his gift.

About 1800 guests were invited to a dinner party held at the Orangerie of the Palace of Versailles. Since what the guests saw that night was just a prototype, the engineers would be pushed into coming up with production-spec models in a hurry.

As the development progressed, the engineers tried to stretch the performance limits of EB110 and they even made a proposal for SS (Super Sports) which was lighter and more potent.

During the test sessions, the car recorded the maximum velocity at 351km/h and became the world record holder.

The company began production in 1992 and the first example was delivered on December First to a Swiss customer.

Artioli, who saw a big business opportunity in the Japanese market, decided to hold a special introduction event featuring three GT's, an SS and even a concept sedan EB112. His forecast was right and the event was a big success, with all the cars finding their owners except for the EB112.

The company started production of the SS in September of 1993 and established the official importers around the world. The factory was in its maximum production phase in 1994, so that you can almost safely say it was their highest point.

However, being hit by the worldwide recession back then, the company was suffering from insufficient funding in 1995. Bugatti lost credibility from its business partners due also to the failure to go public and as a result, the production of the EB110 came to a halt in August of the same year. Though there were some possibilities left for the company to be rescued, in January 1996 it became clear that bankruptcy was inevitable.

The tragedy left the EB110 the only production model brought into the world by the short-lived, revived Bugatti.

There were some other mutations to the EB110 of which Jochen Dauer bought the unfinished chassis and produced 11 examples after the resolution. In addition, B Engineering put together 21 complete vehicles called "Edonis" based on the EB110 at the site where the Bugatti factory used to operated.

In 1997, Volkswagen acquired the Bugatti name and established Bugatti Automobiles SAS based in Alsace. It started producing the Veyrons in 2005 and ended up with 407 cars by the end of production-period in February 2015.

On March First, 2016 at Geneva Motor Show, Bugatti introduced the Chiron as a successor to the triumphant Veyron. With this new flagship now successfully initiated, Bugatti's DNA will most likely be passed down to future generations.