Cars
Part 7 - A Bugatti in your garage? The restart with Volkswagen
The revival of Bugatti, led by Ferdinand Piëch, brought forth an extraordinary 18-cylinder engine. This powerful innovation, featuring three six-cylinder banks, aimed to grace classic sports models and elegant four-door saloons.
Who would ever have thought of breathing new life into Bugatti with an 18-cylinder engine? Only __Ferdinand Piëch__. This was after the sad demise of the Campogalliano factory and the purchase of the historic marque by the Volkswagen Group, which believed a brand that had become legend had to continue its path strewn with unexpected and extraordinary things, like a powerful, compact engine featuring three six-cylinder banks.
The idea was to mount this engine on classic sports models, such as the 18/3 Chiron, and on majestic four-door saloons like the EB 118 and the EB 218. All this seemed ready to take shape between 1998 and 1999. Thanks to a previous contact by Romano Artioli with Italdesign, which had designed the unborn yet very interesting four-door EB 112, Piëch engaged Giorgetto Giugiaro to develop the idea, but sadly, the four-door models never went beyond the prototype stage. In 1999, a lovely, small, two-seater saloon was presented at the Frankfurt Car Show: the 18/3 Chiron.
