If you look at a list of books on Bugatti, you might think that the field as a whole has been mapped out and that the only thing left to do today is to clarify the details. Australia has also long since been researched. However, a team of authors has found another blank spot and measured it: The territory of the former k. & k. (imperial and royal) Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
Before the First World War, its territory covered around 676,000 km² with 52.8 million people, making it the second-largest state in Europe in terms of area after Russia and the third-largest in terms of population after Russia and Germany. The monarchy was abolished after the First World War, and the territory was divided into a number of nation states in 1919-1920. Helge Hauk and his fellow campaigners draw on this political geography.
The idea for this project came from Helge Hauk, Secretary and Registrar of the Bugatti Club Austria. He had been pursuing it since the mid-90s. In addition to the co-authors Pál Négyesy and Daniel Tomičić for the first volume, seven other contributors worked on the second: Milan Tymes, Jan Kralik, Jan Nemec, Jakub Stauch, Stanislav Karger, Maciej Peda and Petr Kozisek.
The book is divided into two volumes. The first volume covers Austria, Hungary and the southern parts of Austria-Hungary. It also includes Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The second volume covers Czechoslovakia as well as Galicia and Bukovina. Of course, the successor states of all former crown lands up to the present day are also included in both volumes.
The individual sections are written in the authors' native languages, i.e. German, Czech, Hungarian, Croatian and Polish. There is also always an English translation, so that the entire text can be read in the modern lingua franca.
The search results are listed by country/region and by vehicle. Here is an example of the list for Czechoslovakia:
The results of the research are available for each vehicle. Barn finds are also documented, as are racing events: here, for example, the Bugatti T35 4932 and T37 37281 in Lemberg (Lwów) on September 8, 1930.
The book thus presents itself as the report of a research project spanning many years, with detailed explanations of the findings, photographic evidence and tabular summaries. Michel and Caroline Bugatti, the youngest son and his daughter, have written the foreword.
It is primarily aimed at anyone who is professionally or hobbyistically involved with the provenance of Bugattis. As documentation, however, it is also valuable in terms of automotive history, because it provides an insight into an aspect of automotive history in areas that are not typically the focus of Western European interest and are therefore little known.
The book has recently gone to print and will go on sale in January 2017.
Further parts of the book can be viewed here.
