1931 Bugatti Type 49 Factory Berline

Chassis No. 49377 Engine No. 305In 1931, the Bugatti factory introduced a wholly new and confidential coachwork on the Type 49 long chassis, with a 3.22-meter wheelbase. Known as the Type “Conduite Intérieure 49 A 4,” it was an exclusive four-seat, four-door body, at a time when most cars were bodied by outside coachbuilders. It was created for the Type 49, Ettore Bugatti's final model and the last to use an engine derived from the victorious Type 35: a 3.3-liter, road-tuned inline-eight with three valves per cylinder, a single overhead camshaft, added fan cooling, and an enlarged radiator for easier town use.Completed on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1931, just before the Molsheim coachbuilding workshop closed for the year, chassis number 49377, presented in these pages, is the only known surviving example of the confidential production run of approximately twelve Conduite Intérieure 49 A 4 Bugattis built in 1931.Delivered through Bugatti's Grenoble agent, Henri Prestail, the car was first owned by Robert Edmond Marie Remy de Campeau, who registered it at the family château in Saint-Ondras, at the foot of the French Alps. Although resident in Montpellier, he sold the Bugatti in 1934 in the area to Paul Pajon, after which it remained for several decades in and around Marseille.In the early 1960s, it was acquired by Jean-Alexandre Retornaz, who embarked upon a restoration before selling it in 1981 to Louis Quetelart, the architect from Le Touquet. Quetelart brought the work to completion and presented the car at the Bugatti Centenary in Molsheim in September 1981. A decade later, it appeared with pride at the prestigious Bugatti Meeting held at the Château de Seneffe in Belgium.Chassis 49377 was then placed on display in a Swiss museum before being sold to the German collector Helmut Pende, who had it fully restored in 2005 by the respected British marque specialists Gentry Restorations. Acquired by the Peter Mullin Collection in 2012, the Bugatti subsequently joined the ranks of the celebrated Mullin Automotive Museum in California.Long misunderstood and attributed to various coachbuilders, its true and exceptionally rare factory coachwork, together with its continuous ownership history, is now revealed in these pages and throughout the accompanying Laugier Report.