Now that everyone seems to have had his share of sh!t, lets focus on the core of the problem.

What would one suggest for solving the originality issue?

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Demand from all event organisations that replica cars are identified as such.

There may always be those that display their car as more than they really are, but that would be their problem, not the organisation's.

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Good point.

Problem: There are hardly any replica cars. They all carry Molsheim chassis numbers...

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Of most of them it is known, to the organisation but also to the owners, if they are replica's.

They could at least try!

But then probably there would be comments and complaints, if the organisation by mistake allows a full replica, while another with "2 out of 5" is not allowed....

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Herman wrote :

Now that everyone seems to have had his share of sh!t, lets focus on the core of the problem.

What would one suggest for solving the originality issue?

Solving it? Don't you think if it was solvable it would have been solved by now? Personally I think the best we can do is try and keep track of what is happening and spread the word ; this forum being a gathering place for those of us who love Bugatti. And like the creator of our favourite marque, we are all a little off-centre. Ettore was an eccentric but flawed genius and ever since his work has appealed to fairly individual bunch of people few of them bores, speaking of which.

Congratulations Mr Russell, calling me a bore is the most hurtful insult you could possibly throw at me ; I freely concede victory to your deliberate, if laboured penmanship. Honesty demands that I inform you that a close friend of yours wrote to me yesterday to give me a brief synopsis of your many achievements and indeed you are one of life's great winners, no wonder you feel the need to totally brain an irrelevance. At you next dinner party do please enjoy sharing with your equally distinguished guests how you successfully stepped on one of the little people. Bravo to you Sir. Just one thing though, I've had a rough life, being insulted and humiliated is part of life and it does not kill. And this forum is the junk yard dog of forums, one fit only for Bugatti enthusiasts. If the Schlumpf brothers were still alive, this would have been their forum. Herman would have been a very rich man, moving on. The rules are simple, on this forum we're all equal, only Herman gets to decide who gets excommunicated, and he does not ban people for being offensive, that I'm still here is certainly proof of that. David Russell's presence confirms it, our marque awaits.

No Herman I'm serious, take the WIKI, WIKI is clean, and the fact that there are still mistakes is part of the proof, the fact that WIKI's chief contributors share a few characteristics provides the rest. None of them are doing it for the money, they are all men of honour and they really don't like each other, making a conspiracy to deceive impossible. That is the purpose of your internet creation Herman ; a continuous search for clarity and truth. The WIKI is a much more comprehensive work-in-progress now than it was but a year ago. Complimentary to this stands the forum, debate, fights, arguments, feuds, has it ever been any different? About Bugatti much remains unknown, but with every post, every photo sent in by master craftsmen, every memory shared by those who know, every passionate difference of opinion adds to this already precious cache of knowledge. And it is free. Anyone can come here and learn, perhaps to add even. Let me type this slowly : The greatest concentration of Bugatti knowledge on the planet is right here. I wonder who will prove me wrong.

At the end of the day we are a community that lurks on the net feeding off lies and exposing the truths, all the truths. I'm writing this in South Africa at 23H03. Where are you now? What time is it? What will you do? Will you leave this forum? No me neither. We'll all be back sooner or later to feed.

I'm done.

Kind Regards
Johan Buchner

to be in a Bugatti forum means that we all are a little special . But it looks like , some are more special compare to others , and some are maybe to special .

Back to the start:
Somebody bough a argentina Bugatti some yers ago .He got papers made that it is a original bugatti made pre war .He had a car accident, with front damage . He sold the "" original chassis "" with the original papers as a original chassis ! No problem because the papers show the proof , it is original and legale . The buyer paid a lot of money for this chassis .

So true... It sometimes give me a headache, but your comment makes me feel better.

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Thank you Herman, you are kind.

I am a member of three Bugatti clubs (inc the UK BOC) as well as the VSCC and I seem to have missed the promulgation of "new rules". Can someone provide further details please?

There are no new rules, JB is refering to a change in how the UK DVLA is interpreting its INF26 doc on reconstructed classics which now means without an original frame you stand little chance of getting a built up car road regesterd.

Thankyou, 37quest. I would be grateful if you could refer me to a DVLA website (or other) that might give me more insight into this area of UK regulation. I am dealing with local authorities in these areas on behalf of the local old-car movement and any material that can help in developing realistic policies is helpful.

They have rules ?

Many thanks, 37quest

Hello all,
I have read this post and I would like to share my point of view concerning copies, replicas and falsifications.
As I can see, everybody has his own idea about what is really original, what is acceptable and what should be forbidden as it is clearly a falsification with the goal of making a lot of money by selling that product to some naïve customer who still believes to find a 1000 000 Euro race car original for ¼ of the normal sales price and that he would be the first and only one to discover that bargain.

First of all, I prefer seeing a “Pur- Sang” Argentinean copy driving down the road than an original that’s locked away in some garage either because it would be too risky to move it as half of the aluminium castings are cracked due to it’s age and a repair or replacement would have a negative impact on it’s originality and value, or just because these cars get nowadays used as a speculation object by people that want to make big money with it but in fact have absolutely no interest in these cars. They will tomorrow invest in coffee beans or US sickness funds whatever is more promising.
This is resulting in the current situation that the real passionate can’t afford those cars anymore unless they win the Euro Million Jackpot.
Pur Sang is not selling or shipping “Bugattis” and if a friend of mine who drives one of these cars was telling the truth, the car wasn’t badged as a Bugatti when he received it.
You receive for about 130 or 150 000 Euro something that can be used, after some readjustment and additional work . Sure, someone can complain about the built quality but for about one 10th of the price of a real one you get something that not even experts can distinguish without a profound analysis.
It’s not the fault of Pur-Sang if people are not honest and try to falsify a car’s identity that does not exist anymore or that did never exist before.
The root cause might well be that it is nearly impossible to legally license such a car in Europe as you will never be able to pass the required homologation tests for new vehicles. Also the ruling of how to get such vehicles licensed in the European Union is not totally communised and at the end people get the vehicles imported and licensed either via the Netherlands or UK with some old or fake chassis numbers and of course Bugatti as manufacturer.
So as Mr. Udo mentioned, yes there should be some communisation in the European Union but instead of forbidding such imports there should be a way of legally importing and licensing as clearly identified copies of originals, with own chassis numbers as the BC numbers. These cars can be considered as a usable patrimony in order to make our hobby public.
This practise is done by museums all over the world for all kind of pieces of art like paintings as well as archaeological artefacts. They learned long time ago that most of the visitors don’t see a difference if the exhibited painting is a good copy.

Now to the initial post that launched this heated discussion.
If someone gets ripped off by buying a new chassis with falsified papers we can say that it is for sure very embarrassing but also this leaves us some interpretation possibilities.
First of all what were the intentions of that person if not building another copy or replica of a car that never left the Molsheim factory assembled the way.
Rebuilding a car with only a damaged original chassis and papers and the rest an assembly of self made and bought reproduction parts from different sources doesn’t make it more original than anything totally copied in Argentina or UK.
I would say it’s even worse as by using a certain amount of old parts the end result gets more and more difficult to identify as an assembly. Also in this case it is the owner’s responsibility in how much he pretends that the end result is original or in this case not a replica but in my opinion a falsification.
Considering that most probably the remaining original parts might have served to build another 2 or 3 so called original cars with stories like” car was disassembled during WW2 to avoid being scrapped and the chassis was used to build a trailer out of it”.

If people are still so naïve to believe these stories I think that at some point they are co- responsible for their financial damage when they buy reproduced things as old without making a profound investigation.
In this specific case we can see that the reproduction quality of the copied chassis was at least good enough either to fool an expert or someone fast decided willing to take the risk of buying without checking.
The Bugattibuilder WIKI is about the best and most complete tool you can use to identify the history of what you are buying and anything that gets offered which is not listed in there should be treated very cautious.
I’m sure that there are different opinions and interpretations of originality.
Everyone has to decide by himself what is acceptable but I think that such a discussion should never end up in becoming insulting as we could read here above.

A friend of mine said: It’s only original if it was rolling through the Molsheim gate.
His son drives a Pur-Sang copy and he is enjoying it. So what??

Greetings:

Minime