Bugatti Type 37 Grand Prix
Below the extremely successful Type 35, Bugatti positioned the smaller Type 37 Grand Prix starting in 1925. While the basic design language was adopted, it originally served as a road-going, two-seater sports car and voiturette. Nevertheless, many customers also used the Type 37 in motorsports. From Type 22 and Type 23 came the 1.5-liter inline four-cylinder engine with two intake and one exhaust valve per cylinder. Engine output was initially around 60 hp. With the later introduced Type 37 A with supercharger, it increased to up to 100 hp. Compared to the Type 35, a narrower horseshoe grille was used. In addition, there were wire-spoke wheel ex works. The aluminium wheels of the Type 35, each with eight wide spokes, were available at extra cost.
Turpentine manufacturer as first owner
Of the presumably 300 or so examples of this model series built, around 220 were Type 37s without supercharger. Today, just over 130 vehicles still exist worldwide. The pictures in our gallery show the car with chassis number 37227, which was first delivered in December 1926. For the then purchase price of 46,400 Francs it went to René Bacon in Luxey in the southwest of France. Monsieur Bacon had become a hero of World War 1 and now owned some large forests in the region. He made his money by producing turpentine from pine. A surviving newspaper article shows that he drove his Bugatti at least once in a race in Pau on February 5, 1927. He finished this race in third place. The following year, he lent the Type 37 to the racing driver Louis Rigal for the Bugatti Grand Prix in Le Mans. However, Rigal retired after the first lap.
First Bugatti of Count Czaykowski
On June 18, 1929, the then famous racing driver Count Stanislaw Czaykowski bought this Type 37. It was the first Bugatti that the Count himself owned. Before that, he had already raced a few examples on loan. In the following five years, he bought eleven more Bugattis, with which he continued to drive races. Among others, he won the Casablanca Grand Prix and in 1933 broke the one-hour average speed record on the Avus in Berlin with 213.842 kph. In the same year, he had a fatal accident in a race in Monza. The Bugatti Type 37 was already sold to his friend and mechanic Ernest Friderich in Nice in 1930. Until 1960, a handful of other owners in France followed, including Jean Vuira (car and motorcycle racer), Claudius Alazard and Bugatti hunter Antoine Raffaelli.
Four-time Tony Award winner
In 1960, Peter Larkin of New York City purchased the Bugatti through Leonard Potter’s Halfway Garages in the UK. Theater fans may know the name Larkin. He won the Tony Award a total of four times for his imaginatively designed and built stage sets. The Bugatti was his everyday car for a long time. An anecdote is recorded in a 1962 article in the newspaper ‘New Yorker’: According to it, the car was usually parked outside the house. However, since Mr. Larkin had to dismantle some parts in the fall of 1961 and send them to New Jersey for overhaul, he looked for a suitable winter storage for the Type 37. He found this on his first-floor terrace. Together with a friend, he dismantled the entire car and reassembled it on the terrace. The article was consequently given the title “The Bugatti Upstairs”. The following spring, they got the car back on the road in the same way.
Around 60 years in family ownership
In 1998, Mr. Larkin commissioned a refresh of the car from Bugatti specialists Vintage Auto Restorations in Bethel, Connecticut. While the original patina on the body was retained as much as possible, the specialist replaced mechanical parts as well as the dash and the firewall. This was necessary to increase the rigidity of the vehicle. In the time that followed, Peter Larkin drove the Bugatti every Sunday until he himself was already over 90 years old. His particular pride and joy was a photo album entitled ‘Frightened Bugatti Guests’, in which he collected pictures of visitors taken by his wife after a ride in the Type 37. He passed away in 2019 and his family had the Bugatti technically refreshed a year later. Now it is up for online auction at Gooding & Co. This begins on 18 and ends on 22 January. It is hoped that the hammer price will be between US$ 650,000 and US$ 850,000.
Images: Gooding & Co.
