Retrospective: Automobiles and aeroplanes: Bugatti

Italian-born Ettore Bugatti already had a podium finish at Le Mans (1911) behind him when he embarked on a project with fellow speed freak Roland Garros to design a plane to cross the Atlantic. This was curtailed by the outbreak of World War I, at which point Bugatti emigrated to France and set to work designing aircraft engines for the French war effort. His 1915 straight-eight 12-litre unit (250bhp) was similar to engines of Garros's design, and though it was not used by the French airforce, the licence was sold to a number of manufacturers in Italy, France and the USA - none of whom brought it to full production. The monstrous 24-litre 16-cylinder (400hp) engine Bugatti developed a year later was produced in hardly any greater numbers, but proved even more financially rewarding: Bugatti sold the licence for its manufacture by the Duesenberg Motor Company in the USA for $100,000, a fortune at the time. The modified King-Bugatti engines, in the end, were not used by the US Air Force as they arrived too late in the war, and fewer than 100 were made; the only Bugatti-derived engines fitted in any number of aircraft were those developed post-war by Breguet. Ettore Bugatti had made his money, though, and he invested it in his car and motorsport businesses, another story altogether.