The Bugatti Type 55 is a sports car produced by

Bugatti Automobiles Ettore Bugatti was a German then French manufacturer of high-performance automobiles. The company was founded in 1909 in the then-German city of Molsheim, Alsace, by the Italian-born industrial designer Ettore Bugatti. The cars w ...

from 1932 to 1935. It is a road-going version of the Type 51

Grand Prix Grand Prix ( , meaning ''Grand Prize''; plural Grands Prix), is a name sometimes used for competitions or sport events, alluding to the winner receiving a prize, trophy or honour Grand Prix or grand prix may refer to: Arts and entertainment ...

car. A roadster, it had a 108.3 in (2750 mm) wheelbase and 1800 lb (816 kg) weight.

History

The Type 55 was introduced at the 1931

Paris Motor Show The Paris Motor Show (french: Mondial de l'Automobile) is a biennial auto show in Paris. Held during October, it is one of the most important auto shows, often with many new production automobile and concept car debuts. The show presently take ...

and that particular car, chassis 55201, was subsequently purchased by the Duke of Tremoille. It was available starting in 1932 and was produced until 1935, with the last car being delivered on July 30th of that year. 38 cars were produced in total. The majority of Type 55s had factory bodywork designed by

Jean Bugatti Jean Bugatti (15 January 1909 – 11 August 1939) was an automotive designer and test engineer for Bugatti. He was the son of Bugatti's founder Ettore Bugatti. Biography Born Gianoberto Maria Carlo Bugatti in Cologne, he was the eldest son ...

, with 16 of the 38 wearing 2-seater roadster bodies and another 7 wearing coupe bodies, both of his design. Of the other 15, 11 were bodied by outside coachbuilders and the other four are unidentified. None of the factory bodied cars had doors which made them far less practical than the cars bodied by external coachbuilders, most of which did have doors. The Type 55 was often criticized by reviewers for its lack of practicality and for being deafening to ride in, due to a combination of noisy mechanicals and straight cut gears.

Specifications

The Type 55 is powered by a detuned version of the Type 51's 2.3 L (2262 cc/138 in³) 2-valve DOHC

straight-8 The straight-eight engine (also referred to as an inline-eight engine; abbreviated I8 or L8) is a piston engine with eight cylinders arranged in a straight line along the crankshaft. The number of cylinders and perfect primary and secondary engi ...

engine with a Roots-type

supercharger In an internal combustion engine, a supercharger compresses the intake gas, forcing more air into the engine in order to produce more power for a given displacement. The current categorisation is that a supercharger is a form of forced induct ...

. It produces 130 hp (96 kW) at 5000 rpm. Differences from the Type 51's engine include the addition of a camshaft driven AC mechanical petrol pump and a modified supercharger drive. The compression ratio was also lowered by the use of a larger 9 mm (0.3 in) compression plate (the Type 51 used a 6 mm (0.2 in) plate). The car's 4-speed

manual transmission A manual transmission (MT), also known as manual gearbox, standard transmission (in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States), or stick shift (in the United States), is a multi-speed motor vehicle transmission (mechanics), transmission ...

came from the Type 49 touring car and featured straight cut gears. The car also wore the signature Bugatti eight spoke aluminum wheels.

References

55 24 Hours of Le Mans race cars 1930s cars Cars introduced in 1931 {{Classicprw-auto-stub