£80,000 Buggati Type-22 Plucked from a Lake!

[350Z]

The rare 1925 touring Type 22 Bugatti, has spent the past 70 years at the bottom of a lake in Switzerland is all set to sell for £80,000.

Alright, but how did this Bugatti find its way to a watery grave you might ask. It’s all thanks to the efforts of an overzealous tax official that in 1936, this beauty was pushed into Lake Maggiore after the owner abandoned it having failed to pay the import tax.

So since 1936, this rare Type 22 Bugatti has sat corroding 160ft below the surface of the water, only being visited by members of a local diving club.

But they have now raised the Bugatti which will go under the hammer at Bonhams( A privately owned auction house)… though looking at the fragile body-work we hope that the new driver doesn’t hit it too hard on roads.

Expert car renovators claim that 20 per cent of the car is still salvageable, half of the chassis and most of the aluminium casings which means that the car can be saved and can be returned to its original splendor.

The car is expected to sell for around £80,000 with all money raised going towards the Damiano Tamagni Foundation which is based in Ascona, Switzerland.

A spokesperson for Bonhams said, "One of the most extraordinary lots ever to be offered at auction, a touring Bugatti which lay at the bottom of a Swiss lake for over seventy years, will also be going under the hammer at Retromobile. The spokesperson also added “The Brescia Bugatti has inevitably suffered some damage during its extensive stay underwater. It could also prove to be a most interesting restoration project."

Courtesy: Carazoo.com

 

[Zinam]

70Yrs under water & they still say restoration is easily possible ?

Seems to be intersting & I really want to see the final outlook of the car.

 

[Aditya]

The restoration work will be real interesting too!!

 

[cooldhaya]

After 70 full years immersed in water will they be able to get the car back in perfect running condition?? Most of the body would have been corroded right?? Seems interesting want to know the final outcome!

 

[Akash]

My god. The owner must have been a devil. Drowned this beauty into the lake?
Anyways as everybody said, it will be interesting to see how the restoration work finally ends up?

 

[Arun]

They should turn this into an aquarium. It is already used to water.

 

[sachinj12]

Or a sub marine

 

[Umang]

it will be very difficult to restore this car which has just become a junk now. how will they manage the spare parts and all?

and sad of the owner who drained it into lake because of not paying the tax, he should have sold it instead!

 

[cooldhaya]

Maybe he was too possessive of the car that he wanted nobody else to use it!

 

[incarnation]

this is what happened to it.
For the locals around Lake Maggiore on the Italian-Swiss border, the mythology surrounding the Bugatti in the Lake was well known. This particular 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia Roadster used to belong to Golden Age of Grand Prix driver René Dreyfus, who lost it in a drunken poker game to Swiss playboy Adalbert Bodé in Paris in 1934; Bodé soon left for home with his new machine, but with no cash in pocket, he was unable to pay its import duties when he was stopped at the Swiss border. Bodé walked away, leaving Swiss officials to dispose of his prize however they saw fit. In those days, a ten-year-old Bugatti wasn't of significant value, so officials chose to roll it into the lake; its eventual resting spot was 173 feet below the surface of the water. Yet it wasn't until the summer of 1967, when deep-diving technology was able to overcome the 29 fathoms of water pressure, that the Bugatti tale ceased to be a myth; a local diving club was able to see it for the first time. For more than four decades, amateur divers plunged the depths of the lake to catch a glimpse. Hey, if Nantucket can have the Andrea Doria, why can't Lake Maggiore have its own Bugatti? An unforeseen, unconnected event led to its eventual exhumation and sale. In 2008, a local boy was killed at a street fair, a victim of a brutal, random beating; the local diving club elected to raise the long-sunken Bugatti and donate the proceeds to a non-profit foundation established in the victim's name to combat youth violence. A crowd of thousands witnessed the long-sunk Type 22 emerge from Lake Maggiore on July 12, 2009. (Famously, there was still air in the remaining Englebert tires as it was raised to the surface.) The half of the car that retains its body and tires rested in the silt at the bottom of the lake for decades; the remainder, exposed to the lake, is a solemn reminder of the effects of the elements. Suitably prepped, it sold for around $370,000 at the Bonhams auction at Retromobile in Paris in January 2010; the buyer was Peter Mullin, he of the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, California. Today, the Bugatti is displayed in its own room, walled off from the rest of the collection; the space is designed to invoke intimacy, and to roughly replicate the (minimal) light levels available at the bottom of the lake. All the better to help a viewer concentrate on the endless details that make the Brescia a must-see work of art. Art is open to interpretation, and art is designed to make you think and feel. The Brescia scores on all counts. "This is a car that's had many different lives," says museum curator Andrew Reilly. "Here's a twin-plug competition car, rebodied to carry its current torpedo body. It's known to have belonged to René Dreyfus, then lost in a card game in Paris. It was pushed into the lake, it became a part of local lore, it became a tourist attraction. Depending on what part of its lifespan you focus on, you come away with a different appreciation. If the focus is on the young man who lost his life, it's a somber part of the story. The faded grandeur of great pre-war cars suffering certain indignities is another. The watery crypt and silence and darkness this car survived in lends itself to another solemn experience." The Bugatti from the Lake - 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia | Hemmings Motor News.

just came across this thread and found it intresting and thought of contributing.