In the late 1920s, when Ettore Bugatti heard that his car was being compared unfavorably to a Rolls-Royce, he set out to build the most luxurious car ever made and came up with one monster of an automobile.
Behold, the Bugatti Type 41 AKA the Bugatti Royale.
First built in 1927, the Bugatti Royale was HUGE: It's 6.4 meter (21 feet) long and had a wheelbase of 4.3 m (169 inch). It had a 300HP aircraft engine that Bugatti had designed previously, and was capable of accelerating the car to around 200 km/h (124 mph - that's not nearly as fast as cars can go today, of course, but remember, this was in the 1920s). To make sure the car can go the distance, he installed a 200 liter (53 gallon) gas tank.
Bugatti planned to build 25 of the Bugatti Royale and sell them to royalty. The first car was supposed to go to King Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1928 but he was dethroned before the car could be delivered. The next year, the Great Depression started and no royalty wanted to be seen buying "the most luxurious car ever made."
There was one royalty who was interested - King Zog I of Albania, a self-proclaimed monarch. Bugatti refused to sell, claiming "the main's table manners are beyond belief!"
King Zog I - The Big Bird
As an aside, King Zog was definitely one very interesting character. I mean, come on, his name was "Zog" for goodness' sake, which in Albanian means "bird" so he's also called "The Big Bird".
First, he smoked like a chimney, claiming to smoke some 200 cigarettes a day. He's also the target of some 600 gjakmarrja or blood feuds - simply put, blood feuds is a law where if you kill a man, his relatives kill you, and then your relatives kill them, and so on for generations. Why so many? It's because to stay in power, Zog simply killed his rivals and critics wholesale. Zog survived over 55 assassination attempts before he fled Albania when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini invaded the country.
Anyhoo, I digressed (don't get me started on Crown Prince Leka, son of King Zog - now that guy once stopped a kidnapping attempt by pointing a bazooka out of his plane's door. Then, he gave Ronald Reagan a baby elephant named "Gertie" which Nancy Reagan thought as unrefined so she renamed it, "GOP").
Back to the Bugatti Royale.
Armand Esders
It took five years for Bugatti to sell his first Royale. In 1932, he sold the car to a Parisian textile company owner named Armand Esders.
Ettore's 23-year-old son Jean Bugatti customized the Bugatti Type 41 as an open-air two-seater with sweeping wings on the side of the car that stretched from the front to the rear tires.
Esders ordered the car without any headlights so it wouldn't impair the car's beauty. He said that he had no plans to drive the car after sunset anyhow!
The 1932 Bugatti Royale Esders Roadster, as the car was subsequently called, was in Paris in 1940 when Germany invaded the city. The car was lowered into the Paris sewers and hidden there to avoid capture by the Germans.
Six Surviving Cars
Before the end of its production run, a total of 7 Bugatti Royale cars were made - of which six survived till today (the prototype was destroyed in an accident).
After the last Royale was built, Bugatti had 23 remaining engines so he used them to power railcars for the French National Railway or SNCF.
Image: Bugatti