Bugatti

Bugatti (1960)
by W. Boddy
Sports Car Press | ISBN: none | Condition: Good
Sold by Crappy Old Books

If you’ve ever looked at a blue streak of automotive arrogance and thought, “Yes, but could it also have a radiator cap shaped like a piece of sculpture?” — welcome to Bugatti (1960) by W. Boddy, the slim, charming volume that treats Ettore’s fever dreams as a perfectly reasonable way to get from A to B via Art. This is the gospel according to grand prix wire wheels, piano-wire axles, and a dashboard that politely suggests you wear a tie while driving at 120 and hoping the brakes have read the memo.

Boddy writes with the affectionate clarity of a man who knows that Bugattis are neither cars nor hobbies; they are personality disorders on spoke wheels. Here are the jewel-box engines with their jewel-box tolerances, the horseshoe grilles that look like they’re about to critique your tailoring, and the drivers who steered with bravery, fingertips, and a vague sense that aerodynamics was a French mood rather than a science. Grand Prix victories parade through these pages like champagne bubbles; Type 35s and 57s pose in elegant monochrome, looking expensive and faintly judgmental. There are anecdotes full of petrol and panache, and more mechanical elegance than a Swiss watch caught in a hurricane.

You’ll find the proper mid-century reverence for craftsmanship: crankshafts machined as if for a violin, axles like sculpture, and coachwork so shapely it could have its own agent. Boddy’s prose hums with that lovely 1960 certainty that racing was pure, drivers were brave, and if a Bugatti misbehaved, perhaps you weren’t sufficiently debonair.

Condition: Good — which, for a 1960 sports-car paean, means the spine is steady, the pages are clean, and the photos still have that glossy “darling, fetch my driving gloves” allure. Expect a touch of dignified shelfwear, perhaps a corner softened by time and fantasies of mountain passes, and a faint whisper of old-library dust mixed with high-octane daydreams.

Perfect for connoisseurs of pre-war chic, armchair racers who prefer their victories in black-and-white, and anyone who believes a gear lever should feel like a handshake with destiny. Leave it on the coffee table to start arguments about magnetos and multi-plate clutches. Or file it under “aspirations” next to your sock drawer labelled “Molsheim.”

Lovingly rehomed by Crappy Old Books, where legends are slightly foxed, glamour comes with a patina, and every page corners like it’s late for practice at Montlhéry.

Includes an envelope attached to the inner front cover with postcard of a Bugatti in it.

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