Bugatti Rescued From The Lake After 74 Years Has A Fascinating History Attached To It
Bugatti rescued from a lake? Yes I know, it’s confusing, but it happened in 1934. While we’ll never know everything about the past owners of this car, we now have a rare artifact to admire for as long as we can. Built in Brescia, Italy, the custom-built 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia Roadster was registered to a Frenchman called George Nielly – after all, the plate on the car read “George Nielly, 48 Rue Nollet, Paris” so it’s only safe to assume that Nielly was probably the original owner of the rare Bugatti. Boasting a 1.5-liter engine, four cylinders and a speed of up to 100 miles an hour, the car was most definitely the talk of the town back in the 1930s.
The car had multiple owners during its time on land; for example, one legend states that Grand Prix champion Rene Dreyfus was the car owner at some point in time. We’re not sure when he acquired ownership of the car, however, in 1934 he lost the rare Bugatti to wealthy Swiss playboy Adalbert Bode. Apparently, the two men were playing poker together and when a drunk Dreyfus was short on cash, he bet his 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia Roadster and eventually lost it to Bode. But the story doesn’t end there, unfortunately. Bode decided to take his prized possession back to Switzerland, but border officials told him that he couldn’t take his car with him – it was considered contraband and hence marked for destruction.
Despite coughing up some money to get his confiscated car out of customs, officials refused to accept the gambler’s request to release his car, instead, they decided to dispose of it. Other legends state that Bode happily walked away from his prized possession and let the Swiss authorities discard it because the 10-year-old Bugatti had no significant value to him and that he didn’t want to waste his money on import duties. Well, we’ll never know. And so, according to the officials in 1934, the easiest way to get rid of the confiscated contraband was to dump it into the largest lake in southern Switzerland, Lake Maggiore. The 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia Roadster’s chapter was closed… until 1967 when diver Ugo Pillon discovered it once again, 173 feet underwater, in a completely rusted form.
For 40 years deep water divers from all over the world came to Lake Maggiore, just to catch a glimpse of the rare Bugatti buried underwater. But in 2008 the Bugatti’s fate was sealed. On the 1st of February 2008, a local boy called Damiano Tamagni, who was part of an aqua club in Ascona, was brutally beaten to death by three people at a street fair. The club he belonged to decided to exhume the rare Bugatti and sell it in order to raise funds for a charity named Fondazione Damiano Tamagni. The purpose of the charity is to raise awareness and fight juvenile violence.
Thousands of people gathered around Lake Maggiore on the 12th of July 2009 to witness the 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia Roadster emerge from its sunken home. In January 2010, the Bugatti was sold to Peter W. Mullin, founder of Mullin Automotive Museum, for a solid $370,000 where it is now displayed in the same condition it was recovered in – yes, Mr. Mullin decided not to restore the car. As to why he chose not to restore the car, Mr. Mullin stated that while Ettore Bugatti created this masterpiece, Mother Nature finished his creation.
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