Nestling between two trucks at Donington on Tuscan race day was this Bugatti EB110GT super-car. It's subtle colouring serving to camouflage it amongst the more mundane company, this car is in fact anything but subtle.

Turbos Galore

The EB110 is no sheep in wolf's clothing. Complimenting the heavy set styling is a mammoth of an engine. A quad-turbo, 3.5 litre, 60 valve, aluminium and titanium V12 sits to the rear of the driver. This incredible engine delivers around 560bhp and 450 lbs/ft of torque to the road via Bugatti's unique four wheel drive system, with 73% to the rear wheels and 27% to the front.

With an 8,200 rpm limit, the V12 works its way up to 3,500 rpm before the first of the four IHI turbo chargers gets up to speed. From then up the rev range the remainder of the turbos kick in one by one. This can propel the 1500 kg car to 60mph in a mere 3.4 seconds. Top speed is 214mph which at the time of it's launch made it the fastest production car in the world.

The 110 name was coined as a celebration of Etore Bugatti's 110th anniversary (born in 1881). Commissioned in 1989 the completed car was ready in 1990 but the unveiling was delayed until the anniversary date of September 15th 1991. At a price of £340,000 it wasn't going to be anything but exclusive. Five aluminium chassis pre-production prototypes were built, followed by eight with composite chassis, before ninety-five production models were rolled out.

A slightly stripped down and tuned up 'SS' model was also built for racing. Differences included a fixed spoiler as compared to the GT's elevating device. An aluminium dash and different wheels were also featured. Only thirty one production SS's were made, with five partially completed cars in the factory when Bugatti suffered bankruptcy.

What of the future of Bugatti then? Now owned by VW, it remains to be seen whether exciting supercars such as this will once again emerge bearing the Bugatti badge, or whether Bugatti will suffer the ignominy of being used for 'badge-engineering' to provide kudos to exotic VWs.