When it comes to luxurious, high-performing automobiles, Bugatti has established its dominance since the day it entered the Automotive market. Bugatti cars are high on utility, performance, speed, craftsmanship, and not to mention they even exhibit a level of artistry. Automobile fanatics and designers clammer at the release of a fresh and fierce Bugatti design, and in the anticipation of one, they often find themselves inspired and engaged! These bursts of inspiration lead to concept designs that perfectly capture and sometimes even innovate the soul of Bugatti. We’ve curated a collection of Bugatti-inspired designs, that we feel deserve a spot on the official range of Bugatti cars.
Bizarre and elusive, the late 1930s Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic is largely considered to be one of the most beautiful automotive designs in history… and perhaps even the first supercar ever! Its iconic teardrop shape, dramatic fender flares, and unique details like the split fin down the middle inspired this modern take on the Atlantic. It’s a stunning hybrid of old and new with a modern Bugatti front half and classic rear. Our mouths are watering to see more!
The Spartacus is a hulking SUV concept that ticks the same boxes as the Urus. It feels a lot like its parent company’s design language was seamlessly adapted from sports cars to much larger vehicles, in a way that makes them a class apart. The Urus looks like a Lamborghini, but it doesn’t look the same as say an Aventador or Huracan… the Spartacus employs the same philosophy. It has every bit of Bugatti’s DNA in it, but it feels like the company branching out. In its signature Blue and Black color combination, the Spartacus wears its Bugatti identity on its sleeve. The car sports the iconic horseshoe grille on the front, while the C-bar detail on the side doesn’t just exist, it defines the car’s rear, guiding the back and rounding it off in a complementary way. The car comes with a pretty voluminous body, but its razor-thin headlamps and taillamps help bring about sleekness.
Forget the Veyron, forget the Chiron, the Bugatti Type 57T has officially won our hearts! This concept car designed by Arthur B. Nustas revives the classic vintage Type 57T coupe by the German automotive giant, combining Jean Bugatti’s original work with the modern Bugatti aesthetic everyone so instantly recognizes and loves! The new Type 57T retains the car company’s headlamp aesthetic, the beautifully iconic curved door detail along the split color scheme we all are well versed with. Rather than the arc-shaped radiator, the revived 57T opts for a more triangular design, setting it apart… but those headlamps still remain unforgettably Bugatti. Speaking of unforgettably Bugatti, that Blue + Black combo sure sets our hearts on fire!
Designed as an aesthetic bridge between the Bugatti cars of the 30s (the Bugatti Type 57 in particular), and the Bugatti cars post its acquisition by Volkswagen, the Gangloff sort of feels like a combination of the styles set by Jean Bugatti (son of founder Ettore Bugatti) and Jozef Kabaň, the designer who gave us the iconic Veyron. The Gangloff is all about retaining and highlighting Bugatti’s soul. Its incredibly curvaceous exterior is a sure-shot hat-tip to the Type 57 (especially in the side-view). The fenders on the front and rear quarter panels come with exaggerated curves, pretty emblematic of cars in the 30s, but the minute you switch to the front or rear view, the car’s modern design becomes pretty evident, especially with the LED lights, racecar-style seats, and the horseshoe radiator on the front that resembles the Veyron. In fact, the car even comes with the C-bar around the gate, a feature that’s practically synonymous with the Bugatti brand today.
The Audacieux (which is French for Audacious) is a curvy, bold-looking beast that comes with an exaggerated cantilever headlight, a hubless front-wheel, and an overall form that feels like a German x French crossover collaboration between Luigi Colani and Bugatti. Where the Bugatti DNA makes itself explicitly visible is in the two-wheeler’s clear C-shaped design that is a direct reference to the symbolic C-bar in most of the company’s recent cars, as well as a detail beneath the headlamp which corresponds with the horseshoe radiator – an iconic detail that’s practically synonymous with the 111-year-old brand. Just like its cars, the motorbike comes with the option of a two-tone paint job. The Bugatti logo makes itself visible in chrome on the hubs of the rear wheel too, and given the conceptual nature of the motorbike, it’s safe to speculate that this tame beast comes with an electric heartbeat.
The Bugatti S1 Luxury SUV isn’t the first concept car we’ve seen of this nature. Our eyes were treated to an absolute beauty in the Bugatti Spartacus concept from last month, and truth be told Bugatti is one of the last few luxury brands to have never forayed into the SUV space. Fonseca’s S1 L-SUV however imagines what that would look like, were it to happen. Needless to say, a Bugatti SUV would have to look marginally different from its racecars, and the S1 L-SUV surely does. It comes with a pretty wild-looking 3-bar headlight and sports an interesting break in the surface around the edge of the front, creating an offset of the iconic horseshoe radiator. As with every TrueBlue Bugatti, the S1 L-SUV comes in a blue paint-job, exploring a combination of light blue on dark blue, with a chrome accent that creates the signature Bugatti C-bar detail. The car comes with four doors, exploring a suicide-door detail on the back, and as we move to the rear of the car, we get this pretty nifty looking tailfin that comes with its own taillight, complementing the edge-lit taillight that’s on the car’s relatively sleek, almost hatchback-ish rear.
The Bugatti Type 100M Concept motorbike is so innately Bugatti, it’s beautiful. It comes with four wheels, the dual-color combination that we know and love, and even the C-shaped line on its side which is literally a signature Bugatti detail. Its lack of detailing leaves quite a bit to the imagination though. The bike, from the renders, looks to be enclosed, allowing a rider to sit inside its closed cockpit. On the front sits a dashboard that allows you to look behind you, replacing the need for rear-view mirrors… and while none of Bugatti’s vehicles are electric, the Type 100M concept comes with an electric drive and a rather massive battery right underneath the rider, occupying what I would say is a little too much space for comfort. Impracticality aside, the bike does look, like all of Bugatti’s cars, worth a million bucks! I’d probably make the cockpit a lot bigger though.
You won’t bet on Bugatti creating a speedster any time soon although they stunned us all with the new lightweight Bolide. To fill this void, designer Alessio Minchella and 3D modeling concept artist Luigi Memola have brought to life a roofless Bugatti speedster that’s absolutely stunning. They like to call their concept “Type 251 Evo” and it’s based on the highly acclaimed production super sports car, the Bugatti Chiron. This head-turner draws inspiration from the classic Type 251 designed by Italian engineer Gioacchino Colombo of Ferrari fame. The race car was completed in 1955 and eventually taken for a spin in the 1956 French Grand Prix. The vision to design this desirable Bugatti is to have a street-legal race car that has the signature Chiron DNA, still being lightweight and overshadowing the “C” design element customary to the fastest Bugatti ever.
The Bugatti Type 35 revival is a great example of two things – A designer’s ability to push boundaries and create concepts that capture their passions, and those concepts sometimes being powerful enough to actually pave the way forward for something bigger. Little did Andreis van Overbeeke know that his desire to see Bugatti compete in the Formula 1 series would result in him landing an internship at his dream company. The desire to actually see a Bugatti-branded F1 car pushed Andries to create a concept that he published on Reddit. The images ran their course, reaching Bugatti’s execs, who then went on to invite van Overbeeke to their headquarters in Molsheim, France, for an internship… resulting in a much more fleshed-out concept car with the Type 35 revival. The image above shows the Type 35 revival in its glorious avatar standing right beside Bugatti’s own Vision GT vehicle – its spiritual predecessor.
Every car sits somewhere on a spectrum ranging from utilitarianism to craftsmanship. Some cars are more utilitarian than others, other cars showcase a level of artistry that makes them truly stand out… the Bugatti Next-57, I’d argue, sits so far on the artistic end of the spectrum that it really pushes the boundaries of how beautiful a car could look. Created as an homage to the classic Bugatti 57, the Next-57 celebrates every inch of the vintage car by modernizing it, exaggerating it, and making it even more beautiful. The result? A chariot fit for a king, with an incredibly elegant long body that tapers off at the front, exposes the axles on the front wheels, giving a chariot-like appearance, along with an interior that’s ensconced in luxurious red suede. The black and red combination is a statement in their own right. Giving the car its mysterious, million-bucks appearance, the chariot’s gloss-black exterior is a magnet for sharp highlights and high contrasts, making it look like a jewel on the road. The car’s long body starts with its edge-lit headlights, sitting between the externally-placed wheels. The wheels are covered by fenders that half-cover it, revealing the luxurious constellation-inspired rims behind, that shine and rotate as the wheels turn.
