Nuvolari's $4million Bugatti breaks auction records

Author

Bob Murray
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Race

Historic
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If you are going to have a Bugatti, you might as well get one that was driven by Tazio Nuvolari… That’s just one of the many claims to fame of the 1931 Bugatti Type 51 Grand Prix racer that Bonhams has just sold – for US$4 million, setting a record for the Type 51 and becoming star lot of the auction house’s Quail Lodge sale during Monterey Week, the US’s biggest seven days of the year for collectors’ cars.

As well as Nuvolari many other names are associated with this particular Type 51 – including Piero Taruffi – but this best-known and most distinctive of all Grand Prix Bugattis remains synonymous with the English aristocrat who bought it new and raced it in European grands prix of the early 1930s. That was Francis Richard Henry Penn Curzon CBE, otherwise known as the Viscount Curzon and the 5th Earl Howe.

Earl Howe took up racing late, at 44, but did so with a passion, as well as a precision and style born of his Royal Naval family upbringing. He was successful too, winning Le Mans in 1931 in an Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 with his chum Sir Henry 'Tim' Birkin. That same year he ordered a Type 51 – the true supercar of its day with its 180bhp twin-overhead camshaft supercharged straight-eight engine.

For four years Earl Howe campaigned the Bugatti in grand prix racing: four times at Monaco (best result fourth), and at Montlhery, Nürburgring, Brooklands, Monza and Rheims. In between times Earl Howe – and friends like Nuvolari and Taruffi – drove it in other events, and at Shelsley Walsh and Brighton for the Speed Trials. In the BRDC 500 Earl Howe lapped Brooklands Outer Circuit at an average speed of 126mph, showing just how quick this car was.

The car – chassis number 51121, which makes it the first of the 40 Type 51s built – had a long and varied career, staying competitive even after Earl Howe sold it in 1934. As Bonhams says, as a privately-owned racer rather than works car its racing history is much easier to chart, and the car has a known history from new.

Most recently this special Bugatti has lived in the US with its collector owner who bought it in 1983. The Bonhams sale is the first time in its 85 years that the car has been publicly offered.

All of which means, as Bonhams reports, that its sale caused something of a sensation. The price again? $4m, which is a bit over £3m. Like Earl Howe himself – who would go on to become one of Britain's best-known racing drivers, as well as president of the BRDC – the Bugatti Type 51 he loved so much always had its place in history assured.

Images courtesy of Bonhams