After the 1932 season the car was converted to monoplace, but still in 1.5 litre configuration. First appearance at the Eibsee ice race on 5 Feb 1933. First photos I have is from the AVUS race on 21 May 1933 (#1).





At the Hohnstein hillclimb on 10 Sep 1933 :



And at Brno 1 week later still with the Hohnstein race number painted on the car.:

Burggaller appeared with this same car also at the AVUS race on 27 May 1934 (#2):

One week later at the Eifelrennen on the Nürburgring - 3 June 1934 - he raced in the voiturette class, but unfortunately I have no photo. Heavily required...!!

And again 1 week later - 10 June 1934 - he appeared at the Felsberg hillclimb:



As you can see the car now has standard 2-seater bodywork with fenders, and indeed it started in the 1.5 litre sports car class.

Question: Where's the monoplace bodywork??

After that Burggaller started at the Kesselberg hillclimb (17 June 1934), where he was 2nd in the 1.5 lite sports car class, and at the Schauinsland hillclimb at Freiburg (19 Aug 1934), where he won the 1.5 litre sports car class. At the Prix de Berne (voiturette supporting race to the Swiss GP) on 28 Aug 1934 he finished 3rd, unfortunately no photo available. The last race of his career HG had at the voiturette supporting race at Brno on 30 Sep 1934. For me the car clearly was a standard 2-seater, as it had not the typical headrest of the Monoplace (look at the double fuel fillers, which at the monoplace had been positioned left and right of the headrest):

So had the monoplace converted back to standard bodywork? It seems so, at least if we talk about the same car.

Question:
What bodywork had Burggaller's car at the Eifelrennen on 3 June 1934? The week before at the AVUS it was monoplace, one week later at the Felsberg it was 2-seater.

Interesting, isnt't it...?

After he stopped his racing career after the 1934 season (he went back to the airforce where he served already during WW1) he sold his Bugatti to Rudolf Steinweg of Munich. Steinweg already was owner of the ex-Charly Kappler ex-von Leiningen T35C which he bought from Prince Hermann zu Leiningen in 1933.

At the Eifelrennen on 3 June 1934 Steinweg raced this T35C with a monoplace bodywork. He had to retire due to broken rear axle, clearly visible on these photos:











Did Steinweg buy the bodywork from Burggaller already for the Eifelrennen? And at the end of the season then also the T51A?
No, Steinweg did not race the T51A already at the Eifelrennen, look at the supercharger hole, clearly a SOHC engine.

Do you remember the photo of Burggaller from the Felsberg hillclimb one week after the Eifelrennen? Behind him you can spot the wheel of the next car (Burggaller had r/n 108).



Yes, this is Steinweg with his T35C, with the monoplace bodywork I believe is that fixed previously to Burggaller's car.

Rudolf Steinweg crashed fatally during practice for the Guggenberg hillclimb (near Budapest) on 2 Nov 1935. No idea whether in the T35C or in the ex-Burggaller T51A. However, it seems it was the T35C, as the history of the T51A goes on.

It was accquired by Ernst Troeltsch of Wildgutach, who sold it in 1937 to Leonard Joa of Pirmasens. Who at the end of 1938 sold it to Fritz Georg Martin of Rottweil. Unfortunately I have no photos from this period, looking for some since years.

F.G. Martin drove this car at the first ever post-war German race, the Ruhestein hillclimb on 21 June 1946:







And exactly in this form the car today is displayed at the Schlumpf collection as #51134.


But is this really #51134?

Is this indeed the ex-Burggaller car? As we could see Burggaller converted his monoplace back to standard 2-seater. And also his monoplace bodywork was totally different from that used on the Martin car.

Why is the Burggaller's car generally quoted as #51134, although it was basically the ex-Bremme #4842/#4853?

From where did Burggaller get the T51A engine as early as May 1932?

What has the Escher car #51134 to do with Burggaller, taking into consideration that it was only delivered in July 1932?


I put my cards on the table, it's your turn now...!

PS:

Why the hell painted these stupid Mulhouse guys the car blue although it was white for all it's damned 20 year long racing career..??

For the same reason they put the twin rear wheels designed for the monoplace at Prescott onto a road-equipped sports car.

A few observations :

The more I look at the photos of the Burggaller single-seater and sports-car the more small, even arbitrary differences reveal themselves. The handbrake, rear suspension arms and lower side aprons are all slightly different. Swapping a body is involved enough, but changing the location of the steering wheel and all the differences to the mechanism, scuttle and pedals this must entail seems rather improbable.

Just perusing the photos and comparing them with the dates, it looks to me like we are talking about 2 different cars here. Could it be that Burgaller had 2 frames, each with its own body, a few engines (single and double cam eights, perhaps a T37 as well?) which he would then mount into these frames as racing regulations demand. Perhaps 51134 was just a convenient number used by him to simplify travelling arrangements?

As for the Mulhouse car, the handbrake is a completely different shape again.

3 different shaped handbrakes, not much in the way of evidence is it now?

Something onebugatti said intrigues me, that finding the frame number is the Holy Grail. Probably the best documentation I have access to on a specific T51 is for 51133, the ex-Chiron , Bith "Baby" Atlantic, Laugier wrote a full chapter on it in his T57S work. Last night I reread it again, but not once is the frame number mentioned.

All this information, and still no clarity. And all around the world fakers and replicators are exploiting this confusion and new cars are passed off as original, the definitive proof of the original being long gone. Those of us interested in the plain truth seems to have lost. God I hope I'm wrong.

Johan

The brake lever should be no point. The hand brake was a vital instrument for racing, especially at hill climbs, and much drivers changed the lever individually.

Different cars, yes, I had this idea already, but I dropped it.
One has to understand the racing scene in Germany during the 30's.

There had been only 3 circuit races (AVUS at Berlin, Eifelrennen and GP at the Nürburgring), but countless hillclimbs. The status of these hillclimbs had been very high, Mercedes and Auto Union even built special hillclimb race cars, and the German mountain championship had en equal high status for them as the European GP driver's championship. Enormous spectator crowds attended these events, for the Freiburg Schauinsland climb often more than 150.000 had been reported.

Burggaller and also other German privateers like Kappler, von Morgen, Steinweg, Kohlrausch, Bäumer etc. had been professionals, meaning they made their living with racing. Their income had to come from starting and price moneys. During the season they travelled from race to race, often only one week in between, cumulating to sometimes 20 or more races per year. Most of these in Germany, but also abroad if the diary allowed it and if the stating money was interesting enough.

Price money at hillclimbs as a total often was rather high, but it had to be splitted into the different classes (sports and racing cars, 4 or more engine capacities, and not to forget the motorcycles). Therefore the profs often started in different classes, mainly by switching between sports and race cars (easy with a Bugatti), but also by using cars of different engine size. Charlie Kappler as example had a Simson Supra for the 2 litre sports car class, a T35C for the 2 litre racing cars, and a T35T for the 3 litre class - sports and/or racing cars. This was also the reason that Steinweg bought the Burggaller T51A additionally to his T35C, so he could start in the 1.5 and the 2.0 litre class at hillclimbs. With such strategy starting money could be doubled or even tripled, and the same applied also for the price money.

But for Burggaller no double starts in different capacity classes are known. In 1932 he started only in the 1.5 litre class - sports and/or race cars -, and in 1933 exclusively in the 1.5 litre racing class (2 seats obligatory for the sports cars). In 1934 he continued his campaign in the voiturette class, but from Felsberg onwards at hillclimbs he only started with the sports cars. Which confirms that his car was no monoplace anymore.

If Burggaller indeed had retained a second car - or engine - we would have seen him at least sporadically in the 3 litre class, because such car would have been the T35B. Instead of using 2 Bugattis Burggaller in 1934 sporadically lent from Bobby Kohlrausch the Austin 7 allowing him to start also in the 750/800 cc class.

Not really. If Burggaller had retained all the original parts it was rather easy to transform the monoplace back to standard 2-seater bodywork. And if Burggaller indeed sold the monoplace parts to Steinweg, he could have used the original parts of Steinweg's T35C.

For Steinweg the monoplace conversion was surely more difficult, because he had the magneto in the center of the dashboard where the steering must be fitted. No idea how he managed this.

I understand that the monoplace car in the Schlumpf collection is indeed #51134, and because of the unique bodywork there should be no doubt that this is the car driven by F.G. Martin at the 1946 Ruhestein race.
Period German press reports said that Martin's car was the ex-Burggaller Bugatti, but was that really correct? Which prove do we have? It is also reported that Martin bought the car prewar from Joa, Joa from Troeltsch, and he from the Steinweg heirs. But it seems that the only source for this history is Erwin Tragatsch, who in fact had very good knowledge about the German Bugatti scene, but who was not faultless.

There is no photografic documentation between Burggaller 1934 and Martin 1946, so we do not know when the car first appeared in the Martin/Schlumpf layout. We even do not know which of his cars Steinweg drove when he crashed fatally at Budapest. We cannot exclude that it was the ex-Burggaller T51A, which after that was scrapped.

Troeltsch and Martin, as well as some other German Bugatti freaks like Wimmer and Herbster, had been at home in the very deep Southwest of Germany, very close to Alsace and to Switzerland. Therefore it is not impossible that the Escher T51A #51134 somewhere in the 30's found the way over the border to Troeltsch or Martin, or even to Joa. Which would mean that the car in the Schlumpf collection has nothing to do with Burggaller. The "#51134" for the Burggaller car has no period sources, it was simply forwarded backwards - Mulhouse --> Martin --> Joa --> Troeltsch --> Steinweg --> Burggaller. And if this history line is incorrect, then the #51134 for Burggaller is incorrect too.