Bugatti Type 41 Royale

Bugatti Royale at a glance

Why Ettore Bugatti built the Royale

Ettore Bugatti wanted a car that would outclass Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Benz, Maybach and Cadillac, with the strongest and smoothest engine of its day. English Wikipedia retells the story that he took up the idea after an English woman compared his cars unfavourably with Rolls-Royce. German Wikipedia dates the start of planning to 1919. The target customers were Europe's royal families, which gave the car its name.

The size makes the ambition clear. English Wikipedia compares the Royale with the Rolls-Royce Phantom VII of 2003–2017: the Bugatti is about 20% longer and more than 25% heavier. Each cylinder displaced more than the whole engine of Bugatti's contemporary Type 40 touring car. France's fiscal rating was 73 CV, while a Rolls-Royce Phantom I or II was rated at 40 CV.

The first chassis, 41100, ran in 1926 with an open tourer body taken from a Packard. That year W. F. Bradley tested it for Autocar at Ettore's request and found that it handled with the balance of the smaller Bugatti sports cars. In June 1928 a Royale was shown in public at the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. Ettore announced that King Alfonso of Spain would receive one in 1928, but the king was deposed in April 1931 without taking delivery. He also refused to sell a car to King Zog of Albania, saying that "the man's table manners are beyond belief!" The wider story of the factory is in our history of pre-war Bugatti.

Engine: a 12.8-litre straight-eight

The engine came from an aero-engine design for France's Air Ministry that never went into production; German Wikipedia names it as the Type 34 of 1923. It is a straight-eight with a monobloc iron block and an integral cylinder head, so there is no head gasket. About 1.4 m long and 1.1 m high, it is among the largest engines ever fitted to a passenger car.

The sources disagree on details. English Wikipedia describes two inlet valves and one exhaust valve per cylinder and only three main bearings; German Wikipedia gives one inlet and two exhaust valves and a crankshaft in nine main bearings. German Wikipedia quotes power figures from 147 kW (200 PS) to 220 kW (300 PS) and thinks about 202 kW (275 PS) is the most likely real output. The engine pulled so hard at low speed that the driver could select second gear at about 10 km/h and accelerate beyond 100 km/h without changing up.

Maintenance was demanding. Grinding the valves was a routine job, and with a one-piece block and head it meant taking the whole engine apart. With about 3,175 kg to move, even 224 kW gives only about 71 kW per tonne, a figure our power-to-weight calculator puts in context.

Chassis, wheels and the elephant

The chassis followed Bugatti practice. Semi-elliptic leaf springs carried the front axle, and the rear used Bugatti's forward- and rear-facing quarter-elliptic springs. To balance the long engine, the aluminium three-speed gearbox sat at the rear as a transaxle, and the clutch housing was mounted on the chassis rather than the engine to reduce noise.

The cast alloy "Roue Royale" wheels measured 610 mm (24 in) and were cast in one piece with the brake drums. The brakes were large cable-operated drums that worked well but needed a strong leg. Inside, English Wikipedia mentions whalebone dashboard controls and a walnut-covered steering wheel. On the radiator cap sat a standing elephant, a sculpture by Ettore's brother Rembrandt Bugatti. Every Royale was bodied individually, so no two cars look alike.

The six surviving Royales

During the Second World War, 41100, 41141 and 41150 were bricked up at the Bugatti family home in Ermenonville to hide them. In the summer of 1950 L'Ebe Bugatti sold 41141 and 41150 to the American racer Briggs Cunningham, and the two cars reached the USA in January 1951. The two Mulhouse cars now stand in the Cité de l'Automobile, the former Musée National de l'Automobile.

All six surviving Royales were shown together for the first time at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in 1985. In 2007 five of them came to the Goodwood Festival of Speed for the model's 80th anniversary. Auction figures for the Royale appear in the sources only in non-euro currencies, so they are not given here.

Railcars: how the engines paid off

When the last Royale was finished, 23 engines were left over. Bugatti used them in railcars for France's state railway SNCF, with two or four engines per vehicle. German Wikipedia dates the start of the railcar work to 1935. English Wikipedia counts 79 railcars and 186 engines. Derated to about 149 kW (200 hp; our power converter gives the PS and hp equivalents), the engines still performed well, and one railcar set a world average-speed record of 196 km/h (122 mph) over 70.7 km. The last of them stayed in regular service until 1956 or 1958, depending on the source. Thanks to the railcars, the Royale turned from a financial failure into a commercial success.

Replicas and the Royale's legacy

The Royale's rarity has produced a whole family of copies. Tom Wheatcroft had Ashton Keynes Vintage Restorations build an exact replica of the Coupé Napoléon; it was good enough that the same firm was later asked to make a replacement piston for the Kellner car. Prince Joachim of Denmark used that replica on his wedding day on 24 May 2008. The Dutch firm Hevec Classics showed a reconstruction of the 1926 Packard-bodied prototype in 2011 and an Esders roadster replica in 2016. The Sinsheim technology museum (Auto & Technik Museum) has a replica built for the 1968 film Rebus.

Two later cars borrowed the look. The Panther De Ville, built from 1974 to 1985 on Jaguar mechanicals, was styled after the Type 41, and in 1976 Franco Sbarro built a one-off copy of the Park Ward limousine with a 16-cylinder engine made from two Rover V8s. For a modern luxury car with a similar mission, see our article on the Rolls-Royce Phantom.

Seeing a Royale today: museums and collecting

• In a museum: two cars (41100 and 41131) are in the Cité de l'Automobile in Mulhouse, France, and the Weinberger cabriolet is in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
• At an event: Volkswagen's Esders/Binder car appears at museums and events; it was at the Goodwood Revival in 2004.
• For the engine: a Bugatti railcar is preserved in Mulhouse as well, at the Cité du Train.
• Beware of copies: several replicas and reconstructions exist, so check the chassis number before you believe a photo.

Current and past models of the marque are listed in the Bugatti catalogue, and more veteran and pre-war cars are in our classic cars section.

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