It borders on the ridiculous that this blob of a car could have had any influence on the development of the automobile in any way, shape or form. Even it’s nickname - the tank - is unflattering and creates images the first machines of that name launched on the battlefields of Europe during the Great War of 1914 - 1918.
This is a Bugatti 32 and despite it’s drab appearance is one of the most influential cars ever produced, even though it was designed as a race car and never took the chequered flag and also only four examples were built. A key to this car is the fact that it was designed and built in 1923 when cars were still known, for good reason, as horseless carriages.
It is testament to the genius of Ettore Bugatti and is the first ever car to have aerodynamics applied to its design. From front-on this is not apparent. But look at the car side on and the cross-section is similar to that of an aircraft wing. This was Bugatti’s genius: to apply the same technology to a car that aircraft designers used to create aerodynamics.
Digressing from this theme for a moment it is worth looking briefly at what others were doing to make cars glide more easy through the air. Perhaps the best examples came in the era of beach speed trials in the United States in the years just before, during and after WW1. Those were usually conventional vehicles with two or three modifications. A cone was fitted over the large radiator reducing intake size and the rear of these cars was also tapered off. The overall effect was to develop the car into a torpedo shape so it slipped through the air, rather than push against it. Many cars also used discs on the spoke wire wheels to reduce turbulence although the wheels were still outside the body of the car, with mudguards removed.
The Bugatti 32 followed on from the Bugatti 30 with both cars sharing similar mechanicals. Visually, they were worlds apart, the Bugatti 30 being traditional in the sense of having a large radiator at the front, long bonnet and wheels outside the body. Ettore Bugatti designed the ‘32‘ specifically for the 1923 Grand Prix of France at Tours. Some 50 years later the F1 cars of the 1970s would use similar aerodynamic technology which places the Bugatti 32 among the most influential cars of all time. It was the first race car that was all-enveloping with as few projections as possible interfering with airflow. As already noted the wheels were hidden under the body, a first for race cars of this era.
In addition to the car’s aerodynamics the Bugatti 32 pioneered a number of other vital mechanical technologies: certainly for Bugatti and in some cases for the industry. These were carried over to perhaps the most famous of all Bugatti cars, the Type 35 that went on to dominate world racing for a decade.
Those mechanical innovations included:
* The first racing car fitted with a suspended chassis using leaf springs to lower the car’s ride height.
* The first Bugatti with rear mechanical brakes and front hydraulic brakes.
* The first racing car with a rear gear using a differential.
* The first racing car that used an engine developed specifically for competition and employing an overhead camshaft with five main bearings, three valves to each cylinder a narrow bore of 60 mm and long stroke of 88 mm.
The Type 32 used a straight-8 engine of just 1991 cc or 121 cubic inches, similar to that found in the Type 30 andlinked to a three speed gearbox. The Type 32 also used an extremely short wheelbase of 1994 mm and narrow track of 1052mm. Seeing the car in real life in the Schlumpf Museum it is amazingly small. It weighs just 761 kg. What did not carry over to the Type 35 was the Type 32‘s aerodynamic design. It was ahead of its time and those elements would essentially be mothballed for decades to re-surface in the 1970s when F1 engineers were looking for more speed and turned to aerodynamic studies and wind tunnels.
Image courtesy of Bugatti
The Type 32‘s only race was in 1923 for the GP of the Automobile Club of France. There were 17 cars entered, four of them Bugatti Type 32 in a mixed field of Delage, three Sunbeams, two Rolland Pilain, three Fiats, and four Voisin. After seven hours of racing Sunbeams took the first two places and third was a Bugatti 32 driven by the chief pilot of the Bugatti team, Ernst Friedrich in chassis number 4059 and numbered `6' in this race. Two other Type 32's retired after crashing and a third completed just four laps before stopping.
The race was a learning curve for Bugatti. They knew they had a fast car with the Type 32 hitting 117 mph (188 km/h) over a timed kilometre. But, the vehicle had shortcomings. The short wheelbase caused cornering issues at high speed and there was an unknown effect of the front body styling - also at high speed - which may well have been aerodynamic lift of the front of the car. In 1923 we knew what made aircraft fly, but not what kept race cars glued to the track.
The Type 32 is no oil painting, but its role was pivotal in the evolution of the race car. The mechanical innovations were carried over to the Type 35, a car that went on in various forms to win more than 2000 races. Secondly, although the design was not successful in 1923, it used, but did not capitalise, on the principles of aerodynamic design. It was simply too far ahead of its time and well before the true impact of aerodynamics was understood as it related to race car design.
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