I know that many things that are written are not true, including many of what was written by Hugh Conway.

I was just wondering where a surplus engine came from, and how it survived unnoticed.

The theory that it was fitted in an AutoRail, and thus survived the war etc., seems plausible.

Anybody with a better theory; please come forward!

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Get that recent book by Hucke and Kruta (or whatever his name is). Look at the picture just after the chapter on the Royales. There is a fine shot of a pair of railcar engines. Look close and you will see that they had double ignition, but the holes where the extra spark plugs should be have been blanked off. I believe that the first batch of Railcar engines used up any Royale blocks that may have been sitting on the shelf.
There are no Royale spec engines out there- And there are no chassis hidden away in Alsace or Lithuania... seven chassis were laid down for the Royale, the six production cars and the prototype. There aint no more out there.

You shut talk with one of the ex Bugatti workers , how many car parts did exist at the end in the Bugatti company . And if you say there is no engine , in the moment some people offering a lot of money for this not existing engine . What is your source to have this info , maybe a book ?

for example , yesterday I was in the Alsace to buy original wheels .But the owner is not taking money , he likes to swap with some other Bugatti parts .Last week I had the same problem , many original parts and one original foundry mold , but again no money .

I am also aware of an engine for sale (for a high price) that was meant to be a royale engine but was in fact a railcar engine. As for my sourceof information I am inclined to agree with you that books generelly just recycle the same stories taken from previous books. Read my article in the winter 09 bugatti trust newsletter and you will see exactly what I mean.
As for items such as wheels, then maybe they are around.Get some photos, but not a chassis for an eighth Royale. The prototype engine was very different from the production cars and railcars. Maybe that could be around. Who knows?
The Type 41 has been an obsession of mine for the last 3o years. Anyone with more knowledge on that particular subject really should have gone out more!

Of course the first Railcars had royale "modified" engines.Surely that is common knowledge? It therefore follows that one or more of these early railcar motors may still be around.The Royales were guarenteed for the life of the owner,therefore spareparts were kept at the factory,even chassis.So what is the problem?

I allways question the so called lifetime guarantee for the Royale that WF Bradley spoke of in his 1948 biogaphy- it certainly did no help for Bugatti's friend Josef Fuchs in New York when his five year old car was effectively rendered unrepairable scrap in 1937.
If the engines for the prototype railcar were rescued when the vehicle was scrapped then that would be amazing luck and even if they were, all ancillary parts were different anyway.
Sure, Bugatti made spare parts for the car, I remember as a boy, Hugh Conway telling me that he had access to a spare rear axle back in the seventies, but no way did he make an eighth chassis, he had made three more cars than he actually needed anyway.

The Royale chassis in Lithuania is comming from St.Petersburg . Where can be any chassis number ? There is no number visible . Is it possible . that there is no number .

Dear Greg

As far as I know Josef Fuchs- a gynaecologist by profession and a pioneer in painless delivery in Germany (epidural) had to flee Germany (he was inadvertantly put on a Nazi blacklist suspecting he was a Jew) and went to Shanhai as one of his wealthy patients was mrs Chiang Kai-shek. He fled Shanghai to the USA two weeks before the Japanese invaded this city in 1939. I always understood the Royale froze during the first winter in New York. He had not envisaged that this city could be freezing cold as early as November.
However by then it was too late to contact Ettore who was ordered to make aviation material for the French army and who was forced to move to Bordeaux.
I do not know what the basis is for the lifelong guarantee but if so I can understand why due to the political changes this could not be granted anymore. It is known Josef sought help from various garages in New York to have the car fixed but nobody could do it.

Kees

Hi Kees
The trouble is with the story you put forward is that Fuchs had arrived in the US on April 20th 1937. War was being waged in China but not in Western Europe.
The engine froze in the winter of 37/38. Bugatti was still producing cars at that point.

Adolf Hitlers war on the jews started sadly long before sept 3rd 1939.Even before Adolf became chancellor of germany,blackshirts were breaking windows and beating up jews..An old friend of mine Peter Just, got out of germany in 1937.I realize that the war didn't start for the americans until dec 7th 1941.New parts for a Bugatti could have been ordered at any time up to september 39.Even after this parts were available from Pierre Marco in Bordeaux.In theory an american could have ordered parts until the USA entered the war in late 1941.Some american companies were still dealing with nazi germany until this point.A new Type 57 was built in Paris using parts from Bordeaux in 1940/41.If we count the reconstruction of the prototype on a new frame as a new car then there were seven Royales built,but then I say eight because Fritz Schlumpf ordered his car from the factory which may be out of period but it still counts.Which brings us neatly on to the real Esders.Lemon Burton told me that it was beautiful,and drove very well,When he bought it in 1938.As one might expect as it belonged to a man who had the means to keep it up to scratch.Which raises the million dollar question,Why would anyone take that body off and fit what to all the world looks like a lengthened Delage body from Kellner?? And also curiously what happened to the original Esders body?My theory is that it suffered an accident or war damage and had to be rebuilt.My Friend Andrew Crisford went to see Gene Cesari two weeks ago and I have asked him to find out more if possible about the chassis that went to Hurrah[damaged] Whilst with Gene, Andrew was taken to see the famous T57sc Atlantic which has apparently sold for so much money.It was still at that time at the previous owners house so HAS it been sold?

Late news update ! Gene Cesari says that he never actually got to buy the damaged prototype chassis that he was offering for sale.De Dobelleer claimed that it belonged to a french farmer who was using it as a farm trailor ! It did however eventually end up in the states with Hurrah then Edsel Pfarbe.

The Esders car was sold to a famous French politician by the name of Thome Patenotre (add a couple of french hyphens to that name were applicable). This is where the King carol of Romania story comes into the Royale myth, as it has been suggested that he was acting for king Carol and commisioned Binder to build the body we see on the car today. This was delivered on the 3rd March 1939. Certainly whoever did order this body change had issues with personal safety because the cars rear cab is armour plated (sadly the drivers part wasnt!).
As for the Esders roadster,according to Pierre Dumont it was preserved in pieces but all together in a depot belonging to Binder in paris for several months and was destroyed in June 1940 during a bombing raid on the Citroen works close by.
I should imagine that if the roadster body had remained on the chassis, today it would have made the ex Williamson Atlantic seem like a bargain.

If the date of the Binder body change is correct that blows my theory out of the water !

A bit belated but I admit to have made a mistake in the date Josef Fuchs came to the States.
Indeed he was given his Visa on 8 February 1937. He boarded the SS Empress of Russia on 4 April 1937 from Shanghai to Vancouver, just weeks before the Japanese were fighting in Shanghai, and he arrived in Canada where he offloaded the Bugatti at Victoria BC just short of Vancouver and transferred the car to a smaller steamship SS Princess Charlotte. The reason was that he still was a suspected narcotic dealer and he had been warned that the US customs had set up a trap for him at the border at Blaine. He finally arrived in Seattle with the Royale on 20 April 1937.

As a side note: Mind you, he had been a pioneer in spinal anesthesia during labour (painless delivery) in those days with opiates and it is not known where he got his drugs from. It is a fact though that that he had been seen with suspicion by his colleague gynecologists in Germany, many of whom thought that pain was an integral part of delivery and many of whom were jealous of a gynecologist driving a Royale.
(See Gerald Wingroves excellent research on Josef Fuchs)

OK, back to the chassis .
" The Schlumpfs Had two replica chassis produced at the same time (around 1965 I believe) by the same company that built the original chassis for Bugatt- Alsthom. "

who has any proof for : Schlumpf ordered " 2 " chassis in 1965 ?
Alsthom made them ?
Alstom made the original chassis ?