1928 Bugatti Type 37A - Jay Leno's Garage

in the bugatti room if you've been to this website before you know I'm a huge Bugatti enthusiast and the car we're going to talk about today is a very special car it's a Grand Prix car that actual has real Grand Prix racing history or Providence as I like to call it this is it right here a 1928 type 37 a supercharged Bugatti the fascinating thing about this car it was owned by Pierre Barone you know the new Bugatti Veyron the big 16 cylinder fastest car in the world what was named after the gentleman who owned this car he was a Bugatti test driver as well as a war hero a member of the French Resistance in World War 2 just an all-around sort of classic sort of Renaissance guy race cars worked against the Nazis I mean it's just a wonderful romantic story and I'm sure that's why they named the Viren after him I got this car from man named Robert Dunlap he was president of the American Bugatti Club in fact you see it's got the ABC American Bugatti Club see the number three this is the third car in the American Bugatti Club which has started what 50 60 years ago at least Bob had passed away I knew him and after he passed away I bought the car from his estate and we put a little tribute to Bob up here in the garage you know the guys that keep these things going over the years really need to be commended there's Bob there president American bug Bugatti Club here he is racing that's in a Japanese magazine he was in his late 70s there that's about Laguna Seca it's fascinating to have a car that has real Grand Prix history this is not like the car that ran this is the actual car that ran this car came in third in the 1928 Targa Florio top speed on this car is about 122 miles per hour gadi was born in 1881 he died in 1947 he only lived about 57 years old he was an artist as well as an engineer designed his own cars and built his own cars the Bugatti was the first racing car ever designed as an entire concepts the other designers considered the chassis and body separate entities not Bugatti the stability is car is really due to the low center of gravity chassis being very low without detracting too much from the ground clearance especially Crysis semi-elliptical front Springs located outside the frame members they have rebound clips on the forward half the well-known tried reverse quote elliptical Springs carry the rear axle and shock absorbers of the gaudi design being employed on both sets of springs wheelbase about ninety four and a half inches got four-wheel drum brakes unlike the type 35 bugatti which has those beautiful alloy wheels cast into the drums this being a little cheaper car had wire wheels with standard brake drums this is what they call a moto meter if you look on the other side you'll see this one we have the car on the road this is your thermostat you have a thermometer right here it will read your temperature obviously is the red goes further up the gauge your water is getting hotter and hotter so you can see that easily from the driver's compartment as you can see Bugattis always have these cable operated breaks at work quite well classic bugatti axel let's take a look under the hood here you have your classic bugatti straps a noble god it was quite a horseman he loved thoroughbred horses that's what pure song means pure blood so you see a lot of this kind it's fun to go down to the stables can you make me up some bugatti harnesses sure how much would that be 18 bucks half great let's take a look here beautiful little motor like a watch this model is the supercharged one and a half liter that's 1,500 cc four-cylinder engine revs to over 5,000 RPM the aluminum camshaft gears enclosed a neat square aluminum cover it's beveled driven through a vertical shaft that's the way they did it in racing engines still doing many the cylinder block is bolted aluminum alloy crankcase and it holds about 10 pints both the rev counter and the Delco distributor take their drives from the rear end of the crank got a plane bearing crankshaft and three valves per cylinder two intake one exhaust now that 35 Bugatti had a roller bearing crank c this.type 37 was built to be a less expensive alternative to the 8 cylinder racing car by running plain bearings you'd have to replace the crank all the time although not quite as fast or sophisticated much more durable engine and quite a number of these have beaten the 8 some of the cause they're fast most type 37 the road going 1 how to distribute this has a magneto here's a cutaway of the Bugatti engine quite compact and sophisticated notice how the valve guides employed to hold down the cover plate at your Popoff valve this corresponds encasing like that you'll hear boom you hear a puff of too much pressure and you'll blow a little puff of smoke through there quite romantic well the only thing we added was this fan up here you know in Los Angeles traffic obviously a car is going to run hotter overheat we put a catch tank in if when you race the car at Laguna Seca you don't want to be spilling water all over the track clutch and the brake are quite close together I actually have to wear little tiny loafers or slippers you kind of have to do this when you're shifting you sort of touch it with your toe it's a little tricky but I really need to lose some weight anyway the seats are fairly low they say in their manual there's plenty of legroom I don't know these French guys must have been pretty short everything above this panel is stock I put an electric fuel pump on it also a horn a few other little things like that just so you could drive it in traffic it doesn't have any lights it's got stoplights there's no headlights on that's your ignition that's your fuel pressure that is your oil pressure this one here is your advance in retard for your ignition to advance and retard your spark Gotti's always had to have a clock yeah be a rev counter and you have an ammeter and down below here we added this blower pressure mag switch electric fuel pump and of course water temperature always nice to carry a fire extinguisher especially on a classic car like this four-speed gearbox your gearbox is located outside the the body here and it's not a reverse pattern okay that would be first which would normally be second in most cars straight up is second gear come all the way over here come down for third and then up for fourth and you have an outside brake as well this comes in quite handy if you on a sort of lock the rear wheels and slide it around a little bit which is great fun this is to pump up fuel pressure and this don't really use it you carried a an extra oil tank under this seat in a long race if you were using oil at a prestigious rate you could just hand pump the mechanic or yourself could hand pump more oil into the motor without having to stop and do it their aerodynamic rearview mirror right there little Brooklands windscreen beautiful four-spoke steering way I love the bugatti wood steering wheels is it nicely nicely made just wonderful craftsmanship in these cars this here is your fuel tank right here just spin that off got to be careful with your elbow out then on this side you have your water pump it's spring a loader you put grease in there you open that and that forces grease onto the water pump shaft to lubricate it exhaust manifold oil filter in here a wire mesh screen this right here is your supercharger oil you will check this before we go you fill this with oil and a little screen in there and what this does is this you open the valve on the other side and it bleeds down oil into the supercharger keep it lubricated there's your Bugatti engine number plate right there as you can see just a beautiful beautiful little motor these are just wonderful cars and nothing sounds like a Bugatti dampers right here I think on other web shoots I've called them dampeners that's my mistake it's just my bad Boston accent their dampers they dampened the ride they're not dampener so I apologize to the people to get de mr. Leno so I'm sorry about that this whole body is held on by safety wire we have copper safety wire here this is what holds the body to the to the frame someone comes on clips of wire little body falls off so got to be careful nobody's got a pair of wire cutters around you a moment ago I showed you our supercharger reservoir let's make sure that's on tight I'm going to open the valve here that will allow oil to bleed down to the supercharger quite similar to the supercharger on the type 35 just a little bit smaller this is your tachometer drive right here with this belt that drives your tach think we're ready to go oh yeah got to change my shoes well let's get in and fire it up we'll show you the procedure here get in the car as you can see little tricky turn on your fuel retard ignition fuel mag nothing like the staccato mark of the Bugatti Motors just a fantastic engine it'll take us a little while we get it warmed up let's pull it outside it's hard to believe how powerful this car must've missed I mean at 1500 Zizi it's half the size of the Model T and in displacement and a puts out of Marcus Lee County our car and the top speed of our which is really incredible considering the size of the engine and the period if you he's on the street back in the late 20s kept in contention weather was a drag race or road race brakes are excellent lightweight good handling car fantastic automobile and quite Gosselin traffic quite a few historic owners of this car a notch over the first counting ml erased it and he ever all had it for a while then it went through a number of hands and my old friend Bob Dunlap got it in 1961 and now I got it these engines are incredibly durable like one time even put a rod through the side of the crankcase knocked a big hole in it still drove an alma 3 cylinder my friend Jim Jim Strandberg and high mountain classic these be Bugatti expert he he prepared it for me he did a wonderful job so Jim Strandberg thank you very much Jim look it's running good very few cars get given the raw emotion of this automobile the sight the smell the supercharged of oil is almost no modern car it's exciting to drive is one of the osher their cars that are faster and handle better when it enjoyment and raw emotion there's nothing like this when you see how fast it is in modern traffic twenty-eight gone through the rural roads of France and there was no traffic nothing like it we have an amount an alternator that drives off the driveshaft we can charge the battery while we're driving obviously back in the day and arranged you know I get stuck in this night by the side of the road we have all to the car just on a fully off the drive shaft which will of the matter as our moto-meter measuring our temperature water temperature one running I'm on a fire here we met you I in the Hanneman smell and feel the front well I hope you enjoyed your ride and we've got as much as I did it's great to be able to have a piece of history like this hang on to it preserve it but still get to use it enjoy it in the manner which it was intended so hopefully the next guy that gets somebody does one of these videos were able to say this moron comedian had it before me but he took good care of it we'll see you next week you

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 822,602

Rating: 4.9390597 out of 5

Keywords: Jay Leno, Automotive, Cars, Garage, horsepower, Jay, Leno, mods, custom car, Speed, Fast, modded cars, mechanic, fastest car, Jay Leno's Garage, cars, exotic cars, interview, custom, Leno car, funny, Leno funny, car show, Rare, Motorcycles, racing, jay leno interview, auto, drive, power, fast, amazing, cool, the cars, vehicle, Bugatti

Id: 3f5KyH2jYOg

Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 20 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/KoolWithaK]

I love the tiny supercharger whine.