Bugatti EB110 Endurance Racers: Time for Tea?

The almost forgotten story of how Bugatti built two EB110 endurance racers - fabulously retold for your pleasure

The Bugatti EB110 may not have been the marque’s most successful venture, but it’s certainly one of its coolest. Sure, an output of 560hp is no longer particularly noteworthy, particularly from a quad-turbo V12, but a top speed of 213mph is certainly nothing to be sniffed at.

It’s easy to see why, then, that despite the financial difficulty which would eventually scupper the EB110 project, and lead to the company’s sale to Volkswagen, Bugatti’s ambition for the car remained unabated. The decision was therefore taken to build two examples for endurance racing: the EB110 LM for Le Mans and the EB110 SC GTS-1 for the IMSA GT championship. Now a fantastic short film has been created, telling the story of those cars, and the men who created them.

On how the film came to be made its director, Davide Cironi, explains: “The owner of the two racing cars contacted me a year ago, inviting me to visit him to make this film, and we were picked up at the airport by what I assumed was a lowly assistant. But no, it was the owner himself driving the van, one of the world’s most passionate collectors.

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“Within a few hours, an astonishing series of guests began to arrive on various flights from across Italy: there was Loris Bicocchi, Romano Artioli and Giampaolo Benedini, plus Giampaolo Simonini, Fabio Baroni and Vittorio Filippini – the latter a technician so in love with his work that it was almost poetic.”

Their tales of the car’s conception, from the racing transmission’s design and eventual demise to the troubled development of its single wheel nuts are fascinating on their own. Compiled together as they are here though, and supplemented by plenty of period footage, they make for a highly compelling way to spend half an hour. Enjoy!