![Not only the newest, but also the oldest Bugatti in Hong Kong]()
The new Bugatti Chiron has just made its public Hong Kong debut at the 2017 Hong Kong Gold Coast Motor Festival. The Festival, Hong Kong’s premier motor celebration held at the picturesque waterfront precinct in Hong Kong’s New Territories, half an hour from the hustle and bustle of the City, was being held for the second year. The Chiron, perhaps the most powerful, fastest and most luxurious of all super sports cars, with a price tag of 2.5 million euros, presented a stark contrast to one of its Molsheim cousins also to be seen here, the by-comparison diminutive Bugatti Type 13 Brescia. The 16-valve ‘Brescia’ was capable of over 100km/h in the 1920s, the Chiron with four turbochargers, a century on, can go nearly four times as fast, topping 400 km/h!
Ettore Bugatti’s first production car, (the Italian, living and working in Alsace, a part of Germany from 1871 until being returned to France in 1918), was in rather Fellini-esque fashion entitled the Type 10, it being his tenth design. Fortunately for us all, Bugatti’s works could take the mantle of a full masterpiece and so no half was necessary as in filmmaker Fellini’s oeuvre “8 ½”. There is no record of a Type 11 or Type 12, but in 1910 the first Type 13, similar to the Type 10 but with a bore enlarged by 3mm, was delivered to a customer. The Type 13 remained in production until 1926 after some 2,000 units had been built. The Type 13 known as the ‘Brescia’ received its nomenclature when Bugatti, recorded up to that time its greatest achievement on the track, taking the first four spots at the Italian Voiturette Grand Prix at Brescia in Northern Italy in 1920.
Alongside the Type 13 Brescia at the Concours d’Elegance in Hong Kong the other pre-war cars were a Pur Sang Type 35 Bugatti, and the class winner a Red Label Bentley 3 litre.
Text and photos by James Nicholls
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