Page 32 - Marcello Gandini Maestro of Design Revisited

482BuGATTi 035 (EB110)
REVISITED
ON WATSON FINE BOO
DALTON WATSON FINE BOOKS
 A young Alfredo Stola with his father Roberto Stola, posing with one of the Gandini-designed mules at the unveiling of the EB110 at
Place de la Defense, near Paris. ALFREDO STOLA ARCHIVES
The Bugatti resurrection started with four diverse
enthusiasts getting together circa 1986: a retired Ferruccio
Lamborghini, of Lamborghini fame, Jean Marc Borel, a
young enthusiast and author of books on Lamborghini,
Paolo Stanzani, the engineer who had led the team that
had designed the Lamborghini Urraco and the Countach,
and Romano Artioli, a Ferrari, Lotus and Suzuki (later also
Maruti) distributor in Italy. At the beginning, the idea was
to develop a new supercar in a small, compact set-up,
but Artioli was more ambitious: to revive Bugatti. With
Frenchman Jean Marc Borel’s help, Artioli was able to
obtain the rights to the Bugatti brand name from Messier
Hispano Bugatti, a French state-owned enterprise.
With the help of the engineers at Tecnostile, Stanzani
began work on the engine, and the chassis drawings were
provided to four of the leading Italian design luminaries:
Paolo Martin, Giorgetto Giugiaro of Italdesign, Nuccio
Bertone (and his chief designer Marc Deschamps) and
Marcello Gandini. The guidelines stressed the compact
© DALTON WATSON FINE BOOKS
Bugatti concept, the ID90 at the 1990 Turin Motor Show,
but that was far from Artioli’s idea of a modern Bugatti.
Marc Deschamps developed a 1:1 scale model, which was
rejected too, although the Lotus Emotion proposal by
Bertone in 1991 was inspired by Deschamps’ EB110 design.
Gandini’s proposal was eventually chosen by both
Stanzani and Borel. The design was functional, yet
aggressive and in some ways not dissimilar to what he
had penned for the Maserati Chubasco which received
the green signal. In May 1990, the first of the Gandini-
designed prototypes was built, and four more pre-
production models were prepared for testing, validating
and further development.
dimensions of a length of 4.1 meters or 162 inches, given a
very compact powertrain, as well as air flow specifications
to generate downforce and aid grip and the cooling of
the radiators, plus the use of a large rear diffuser.
Paolo Martin (Ferrari Modulo and Rolls-Royce Camargue
are two of his more famous designs) made a rather radical
proposal, provocative, with a sliding canopy and a huge
rear wing. Giugiaro apparently prepared some drawings
but as he could not come to an agreement with Artioli, his
designs were not handed over. Giugiaro later showed a
© DALTON WATSON FINE BOOK
But with the exit of Paolo Stanzani, Romano Artioli
decided that the design was too much like a Lamborghini,
and requested Gandini to modify it, which he did. Yet that
did not satisfy Artioli, and he asked his cousin Giampaolo
Benedini to rework nose, rear wheels and rear diffuser.
As the design changes were not acceptable to Gandini,
he withdrew permission to use his ‘name’ for the eventual
form of the Bugatti EB110, which was unveiled on
September 15, 1991, almost 110 years after Ettore Bugatti’s
birth (thus the EB110).
The reworked production version of the EB110 (although
still featuring Gandini’s trademark scissors-action doors)
lost out on the sharp-edged, purposeful and chiseled
aggressiveness of the original Gandini design, which, in
retrospect, has been referred to as the 035 (the internal
codename of the project).
DALTON WATSO