Does anybody know if there is an English language supplement for Paul Kestler's Bugatti Royale : Le Reve Magnifique? Should the answer be no, which will be both quicker and cheaper, having the thing translated, or learning French?

Merci
Johan

I never saw an English supplement for that book, though it may be that somebody had a translation made just for himself.

Maybe you can get somewhere using a dictionary, and combine learning French with reading Kestler's book!

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Cher Johan.

Je pense qui il n'y a un traduition en Anglais du livre "Le reve magnifique".

Je pense aussi que aprender Francais est plus rapide que traduire le livre.

Cordialement,

Herman

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Vive la Marque !!

Thank you Gentlemen.

Very well, I accept the challenge. I shall learn to read French. How hard can it be, after all, I already know that 'reve' means dream.

Speaking of which, less than a year ago I dreamed of having a Bugatti Library. Now I have one, and most of the 16 books supplied by people I've met on this forum. (Take a bow Jeroen & Martijn) This weekend its going to be me and Borgeson. An embarrassment of riches indeed.

With Enormous Gratitude
Johan

My previous post does not mean I am not interested in an English translation of the book.

Perhaps a joint effort by some people of the forum?

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It actually does pay of learning french; many literature on Bugatti is of course in this very fine and easy to learn language.

I would have laughed at you, if you would have told me that in my school days! Being one of the worst students of languages, I now manage to speak 5, so there may be still hope for you.

Do you speak Afrikaans, by the way? In that case, you can also read the Bugatti literature that is in dutch!

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So there I was drooling over William's car, when suddenly it hit me; I'm a university librarian. Further studying is encouraged, and free, and French is offered. Now that my book collection is off to good start, I've been looking for a new challenge, and learning French fits the bill nicely. It is the great Borgeson which helped with that one, and Memoirs of a Bugatti Hunter. Strangely enough, often times he would provide very detailed translations, not only of the words themselves, but also the context, and sometimes a whole explanation of the 'atmosphere' of the quotation. I am beginning to understand that the entire concept of communication differs from language to language; culture to culture. I've always believed I have a bit of a gift for language, and yes, English is my second language, and yes, Afrikaans is my first, and yes, I do enjoy reading Dutch. (I find spoken Dutch hard to follow, though, but Dutch speaking people have less trouble following my native Afrikaans, or pigeon Dutch as I like to taunt my fellow Afrikaners. We tend to take ourselves way too serious!)

I loved Borgeson, by the way. But he's no more objective than Bradley! Really, that man seems to believe that his friendship with Ettore's idiot child, Roland, has given him some kind of crystal ball in which all was made clear to him. The big difference between Borgeson and Conway, is that Conway, even in the first edition of Pur Sang, was never sentimental about Ettore. Borgeson, on the other hand, seems to believe that his 'discovery' of Ettore's weaknesses stands comparison with Carter's unearthing of Tut's tomb! And he seems to believe that Roland had some special insight into the genius of his father. Poppycock! Roland Bugatti was an illiterate, uneducated slob who never did an honest day's work in his entire life, and ate himself to death at age 55. Whatever his recollections are, they are no more reliable than L 'Ebe's; the sister he seemed to despise so much.

I did however come to realise something about Ettore; whatever love he felt for wives, lovers, children and cars paled into insignificance compared with his love for himself. Ettore was all, a self created, self taught, deity who ruled the peasants of Alsace, blithely oblivious to the fact that had he stayed in Milan, he would have been an uneducated barbarian, a total nobody. And yet, whatever his weaknesses, just look at the T35. One helluva legacy that. His wife got cancer, had to undergo serious surgery and was an invalid till she died in 1944, looked after by Roland. Ettore deserted her and his remaining children, and shacked up with that 18 year old home wrecking whore. Another way of describing her would be as an innocent victim of a manipulative paedophile. Either way, I don't care, just look at the Royale. Worth quite a few Daughters of the Game, the Type 41.

One can either love Ettore, despise him, or like myself, both, but one thing remains : The Cars. And yet, with all the gifts he received at birth, he should have achieved so much more; he should have been so much better. But there are the cars. None of his critics ever achieved as much; nor those who loved him. And 60 years after he died he can still evoke primal, even feral, emotions in interesting people the world over. The boorish and the boring, not so much. No, not a bad legacy at all.

Regards
Johan

Johan, tell us how you really feel about Ettore'. Don't be bashful and don't hold anything back.

If Ettore' Bugatti came here to the USA, he might have found the kind of crap inside himself that presidents are made of. We have had several like him. Come to think of it, Henry Ford was similar in nature to Bugatti.

Now that I am older and hopefully a little wiser, I have come to believe the personal aspects of peoples lives that don't concern me are better left alone. I think Conway learned (or revealed?) that part of Ettore's private life which was necessary to understand how he arrived at the genesis of his accomplishments and nothing more. For instance, it is difficult for me to understand how he could have produced so much starting out with so little if he had tried to do it any other way. "Is it the times that make the man or the man that makes the times?"

Very good William, nothing like a bit of needle to get the juices flowing. The difference between Henry Ford, various Mickey Mouse presidents and Le Patron is that I have not spent a substantial amount of my own hard-earned money, and in the process of learning a foreign language, to get under their skin. And I own the books in my library outright; once an author has put his works on the market, it no longer belongs to him. It belongs to those who paid good money for it, and it is my right and my privilege to learn from, interpret or dismiss said works as I see fit. Ettore Bugatti gets me that way, always has; my admiration for his cars is absolute, they are unique in both purpose and beauty. What fascinates me is how such a flawed man managed to achieve so much. If you look at the people whose ideas he stole, Miller, Stefanini et al, all highly trained and educated engineers, and you look at the contempt in which Ettore held the educated, (he also forbade his children's tutors from giving them a real education - unforgivable!) a picture of a quite despicable human being starts to emerge.

He forbade his daughter to marry a Jew, yet he never hesitated to take an enormous amount of business from the De Rothschild dynasty, and basking in the reflected glory of their patronage. He sold the Molsheim factory to the Germans, enabling him to spend the war in comfort, and then he had the temerity to cloak himself in the sacred shroud of victim-hood once the Allies beat the Nazis. He got his factory back, but never gave back the millions he got for it. And when he saw that all he had achieved was irrevocably destroyed, he decided to die intestate! Hoe did Roland Bugatti's mistress sum it up; "After me, the deluge?" Gabriel Voisin believed that to Ettore, Molsheim was : "just a game." Maria Callas did something similar; once her voice went, she willed herself to die. What ego! What selfishness!

But to me personally, Ettore's darkest evil concerns Jean's accident. Jean drove like an animal, his death was foreseeable, so you think it was coincidence that Jean's life was heavily insured at the time of his fatal accident? And guess whose business was saved from bankruptcy by the insurance money? The same man who spent the war years being "productive," apparently unaffected by the death of his heir-apparent. A gentleman of my acquaintance endured the brutal obscenity of having to arrange the funeral of his own son, and he has not been alive since. He will never be "productive" again, not ever. Somebody once described one of Colin Chapman's best attributes as : "his ability to use men as tools." Ettore Bugatti used his own children in the same way.

But here's the thing : Whatever he was, whatever he did, makes no difference to the all consuming obsession I have with Ettore Bugatti and all the cars that bore his name. What the hell does that say about me?

Johan

J'ai rarement lu un tel tas de conneries sur Ettore.
J'ose espérer qu'il ne s'agit que de désinformation !

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Ce qui a été déjà inventé appartient au passé, seules les innovations sont dignes d'intérêt - Ettore Bugatti

I seldom read such a heap of conneries on Ettore. I dare to hope that it is not absolutely necessary of misinformation!

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I really don't want to persue this much further. Somehow, I feel it is not a respectable thing to speak too harshly about those who are no longer with us. I will say, however, that I have known a lot of people who had character every bit as bad as that of Bugatti and some worse. None of those people I have personally known managed to accomplish anything worthy of note. I guess it can be said that he was not without some redeeming value. History will always remember his cars.

Indeed. Whatever Ettore did, he set up a factory which produced some 8000 cars, of which about 1800 still exist.

These cars range from relatively simple cars to racing cars, sports cars, and cars which overwhelm you with sheer luxury.

Ettore got his ideas from about everywhere. His logo closely resembles the Deutz logo, the type 35 has about the same body as a 1922-1923 Fiat 805, the DOHC head was strongly influenced by Miller. These are just examples.

In any case, this man DID make it HAPPEN. And that is why we are all visiting this forum.

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If Ettore was not a perfect man, it is known locally for its ideas very in advance over their time - socially and industrially. It is true that it did much jealous at its time and still today.

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Ce qui a été déjà inventé appartient au passé, seules les innovations sont dignes d'intérêt - Ettore Bugatti

The poet Alexander Pope once wrote : "Yes, I am proud; and must be proud, to see Men not afraid of God afraid of me." Again I take the greatest pleasure in courting controversy, in riding roughshot over the sentiments of the romantics. Again, parents are shielding their children's innocent eyes from the sight of I, Johan.

I claim victory; I claim the bragging rights; let us now stop this thread, and speak again of Bugattis.

I am Yours
Johan Buchner.