1993 Bugatti EB110 - Jay Leno's Garage

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well another episode of Jay Leno's Garage you know it's always nice when we get automotive royalty to stop by the program and it doesn't get more royal than this this is the EB 110 Bugatti 1993 in the classic Bugatti blue fascinating history fascinating story to this car EB 110 I think it signifies the one hundred and tenth birthday event or a Bugatti it's it's an amazing supercar when it came out you know in the 90s there was this whole era there was a McLaren f1 there was the Jag 220 and of course the Bugatti none of those cars around anymore but it was a pretty exciting period and this is one of the most exciting cars of all fascinating engine let's meet the owner of this car Stefan Fritz the faun come on in good to see you my friend good to see you thank you so much for bringing this absolutely very exciting you know what this car came out the 90s was a pretty fascinating period ef-1 McLaren this came out of the Jag at 220 came out there a whole bunch of cars but because of the recession and I know what they there was it lasted about three or four years and none of them stayed in existence more than a couple of years and this is one of the great ones I was fortunate enough to buy an engine about 25 years ago from one of these yeah and it's a fascinating engine it's a v12 3.5 liter four turbochargers which was just unbelievable at the time extremely compact four-wheel drive I mean just a brilliant brilliant design how long have you had this one I bought it earlier this year just this year yeah yeah so I'm just getting to really enjoy it now and have some fun with it now was it a car you'd lusted after as a kid did you remember seeing it as a so you would have been what about 14 or something with Kim ah little less well yeah exactly yeah the history of these cars you know they're just absolutely amazing cost they started out with a blank piece of paper and they just wanted to do everything over the top now as I said before the 110 signifies the 110th birthday of it bugatti yeah breakfast than what it was okay and I remember they built this factory and was in Italy yes yes in Italy and I remember the factory looked like a museum I think it had a marble floor yeah and I said to myself why how do you start a car factory would that marble floor must cost a gazillion dollars and I thought the factory is so beautiful but it seemed you know most car companies start in some ragged warehouse because all the money goes into the car yeah but being Italian being an artist you know a totally wasn't gentlemen's name Roma or Romano arty only that's the old yeah okay I remember he built this just beautiful factor I think that cause money come from from that and of course the inevitable happened it just it didn't pan out there's a recession in the 90s this car was very expensive what was it about half a million dollars something like that which although for a supercar these days doesn't sound like much twenty five years ago that was the top of the heap only the McLaren was more expensive I just wondered how they would make a go of it I remember Michael Schumacher bought one of the easy point of yellow SS yeah he bought one too and of course that made all the papers and it it got excellent reviews yeah people really liked it but for some reason I don't know why why did it not succeed you know I'm not sure I think a lot of the the heat at that moment went to like the McLaren f1 when that came out because that was also spectacular this was much earlier actually and RTO Lee who was in very successful self-made Italian businessman he was a big Bugatti collector and wanted to reinvent the brand service right so he took a blank piece of paper and he started from scratch where a lot of the other manufacturers at that period they would start with you know a BMW engine or Mercedes engine or something like that and then they would build a good car around right right he did everything from from nothing with a full carbon chassis yeah it was just over the top and you can see a lot of their early Bugatti styling cues wheels look like the type 54 I think and of course the bugatti blue and the the 110 the homage to enteral bugatti and his initials of course the way he would always do it yeah I mean it was a fascinating car I remember seeing it at the Auto Show and sitting in it I could barely fit in it that's why I put these shoes on you like just wear my work boots but I realized it would mean we get into this thing and I thought it was a little tight but and of course these windows you people always wanted to why's the McLaren and why does the eb1 tend to have these windows because at the time being 200 mile an hour plus supercars there was no window glass that could take that kind of pressure that wouldn't just blow out so they would have to go with a stiffer frame and in a smaller window here now we have windows that can of course go all the way down but 25 years ago was a long time ago imagine they did 213 miles an hour right production car I just took it out and you know made a world speed record and it was only 3.5 liter which as I said is the same as a mid 50s Jaguar pretty much yeah it's pretty most v6 is about three this is a v12 look how compact this whole unit is yeah I when I saw this I just had to buy it I don't know what I was gonna do with the engine we were gonna put it in something we just we've just never gotten gotten around to it but it is so complex yeah and it's all here this is engine and transmitted it's all in here so it won't into weird and being Italian it's it's a beautiful sculpture as well the EB 110 in the valve covers and and kind of like the Lamborghini Miura you could look in the rear view mirror and see all this work you got yeah and this was a five valve engine correct yes and likes a Yamaha Genesis motorcycle is that three exhaust two intake or is it the other way the other way around okay three intake to it okay and it's amazingly compact I mean it's it's you know it's really a work of art design this engine do you know I don't know actually who did it but they did it from scratch you know they didn't go out and buy an engine somewhere and everything and how many of these cars they made you know they made probably a hundred and forty cars where some were prototypes you know with aluminum chassis and so on and I think there's a hundred and twenty production caster probably around 90 GTS and thirty SSS which is the later version wasn't there somebody who took the company over and tried to do some continuations what was that yeah that was a call a company called tower Germany so they they when they went bankrupt they've burned through so much cash you won't even imagine in only three years Archy only build up an empire in Italy selling cars for 50 60 years and he threw all of this money into this project because he loved it so much he even lived at the factory like Ettore Bugatti and right he was into everything he was not a CEO signing papers or anything you know he was a real entrepreneur who was there designing being part of every single decision made about these cars yeah I remember seeing an article on the factory about two or three years ago it looks like it's a hundred years old plants have grown into and it's overgrown and it's rather sad because it was it was one of the most beautiful it looked like a restaurant it looked like the best high-end Italian restaurant you've ever been when he walked in the factory door but I remember reading about it is what I wasn't a kid I was an adult but I remember thinking make any gonna pay for this Factory of me the factory that's of course yeah tens of millions of dollars yeah and he had all the best artisans and artists and engineers yeah he got everyone and that's why he did it in in Italy close to to the other big factories right right because he needed all those workers to come and do the best solutions pose you know the Italians have such passion for this stuff they throw everything into it because I'm sure as a businessman I mean I can't imagine Germans going what is this why did they build such a factory when addictive you know I mean but it was just very Italian like Bugatti himself everybody thinks Bugatti is French he's not French he's Italian who he's an Italian who lived in France and built in France and of course and it's a beautiful design you know and it holds up very well the Countach looks like the 80s yeah and the 90s yeah you'd go oh that's got to be whereas this could be I think you could put this design out tomorrow yeah and it would still look contemporary I mean it's a beautifully built car I just I have no idea in terms of the reliability and the usability of because I never got to drive it i sat in at the Auto Show and I remember thinking like my Miura through a little room in here it's made by the same guy yeah yeah exactly exactly it must have been small yeah everybody's five seven yeah guys just and of course we should notice it's a four wheel drive or all-wheel drive I guess five speed or six feet six feet it is six speed okay and of course built their own transmission as well yes well I I I can't imagine the development costs imagine you're going to a French airplane company they were building things for spacecrafts and airplanes you know and said to them we want to do a full carbon chassis it's the first thing they ever built to be on the ground imagine what that would cost you have the first car with full carbon chassis the weight of a big engine would be too much so they made a small b12 for turbos to keep the weight down four-wheel drive six speed very light and nimble it's very intelligent made you see there air vents open up here when you start to drive it alright gets air in to remove hot air from the engine and so on it's very clever and of course being the early 90s there's no not much computer stuff is it anti-lock brake yes yes yes maybe has abs okay okay this open oh that's us down there okay I see yeah yeah so it would have been developed what in the late eighties I guess yeah yeah and then they started you know the factory was probably starting 90 on his birthday one hundred and tenth birthday okay and the car was finally presented a year later in 91 where they had the finished product and then they produce cars for three years and they were out of business yeah so the gestation period for this to develop it was what about two years three years yeah yeah because even you go to Detroit and come up with a new model even with existing drivetrain takes three years to build it completely from scratch it's yeah it's amazing what they really did and they had so much passion about it you know when ya bankrupted the factory a lot of the guys they didn't believe it they were like oh we will be back on Monday and you know they thought someone would come in and save them so they didn't even want to clean their desk they're like let's leave it here because next week we're gonna be back here boss again right so they built around 120 cars which is impressive actually because this is a very expensive one of the most expensive cars in the world when it came out when did they realize they were in trouble how many cars did they expect to sell to break-even do we even know they were expecting to do around 300 350 cars and they had a Targa planned as well to do that but since the you know our CEO Lee who owned the company he made his money from selling Ferraris around Europe and from importing cars from Japan and selling them as well and when the Japanese economy who kind of went down and in the early 90s the yen went up so he couldn't really do that anymore so he didn't have any money coming in to pay for this party and that combined with the fact that the orders just didn't come in either he bought lotus in order to have a us distribution and the idea was great you know it would have worked but the economy kind of took him down that was probably the major reason and then some of the local competition realized what he was doing and they thought this cars just too good you know so they went out to some of their spare part manufacturers and said if you supply a single screw to this you won't tell anything to us did he himself go bankrupt though was he yeah they had to bankrupt the company and until the very end he prioritized to pay the employees they were 220 people at the factory so he maintained their salary until the very last and then they went bankrupt with around fifty five million which is not a huge amount for this kind of operation we would expect you know four or five six hundred million so when he went bankrupt and he still owned the Bugatti name did he then sell it to VW did he recoup anything or how did that work they had an auction to sell you know all the Indians parts and everything that was left including the brand so dower bought all a lot of the chassis is an engine since I want to keep on production right and false Frank bought the name and all the rights to to produce car oh they bought it at the time yeah yeah oh that's interesting so they were just waiting in the wings yeah they kind of I think they fought some of the cost you know to do a lot of research to test and see because they wanted to make the Veyron in the line of this car so that was I think they had a you know a good idea of what they wanted to do yeah I'm surprised they didn't continue this car I mean it seemed like a finished car how is it in terms of Road ability does it run hot in the summer does it overheat is it pretty good it's very good it's super reliable one of the best cars I've driven from this period because they again they tested it a lot they really build them very well so you can use them in all kind of weather yeah that's also why they took her to LeMond they were hoping for rain and then with the all-wheel drive they would be able to yeah yeah boy it's I mean that's something the Italians do well they get that passion yeah he flew the whole factory to Paris to do the presentation of the yeah because it's a French brand and so on you know so they did it in Paris they had a dinner with 1800 people that night and like the vessei and you know they just please yeah Wow so how is how is it in terms of sir in parts do you find you know I like with the McLaren f1 and the p1 and this seems to be a thing now there's like maybe 25 people in the world like McLaren has a guy that just does the f1 he goes around the country boom boom boom SLR has a couple of guys boom boom boom same thing p1 every everybody's got one p1 guy the United States is there someone who knows these cars and services something how does that work what do you where do you take it when you need some work done I would take it to the factory to the old factory so yeah there is a few of the guys out of the old factory that did like head of proton production a head of engineering and so on they bought a lot of parts back then when they had the auction and they are doing the service actually so I've used them is that in Europe that's in Europe yes the 70 year yea or you'll send them over here depending on what needs to be done the good thing about it is again the engine is super good well made very reliable obviously you need to take the engine out to do a lot of the work so it's expensive to do it but you don't have to do it that often yeah so and it's not a lot of electronics is it it's not a lot of computer stuff no not that bad there is some but but yeah it's again it's super reliable so as long as it's maintained I wouldn't be afraid to drive it enjoy it and have a lot of fun with it and where did this car come from was this an American car did you get it from Europe Leigh I found it in Europe it was with a good friend / client of ours who had it for 7-8 years they never really got to make us beg cos they were in the process when they went bankrupt well that's what I thought because they didn't crash test it you bring this in under what they call show and display law yeah you know in America we have a law called shown display which means if a car is of technical or historical importance and is no longer being manufactured you could drive it 2,500 miles a year in America and that's it you can't drive any more than that which is not bad and that's how the f1 McLaren came in is well and this was one of those cars because the crash test this you know you run through three of them into a whole happy yeah it's prohibited so that's how I how many in the states do you know i we don't know exactly I would think there are probably 15 costs here in the u.s. that came in some came in and were federalized when they came here and now we have the 25-year import rule which this is under right right yeah said their deer increasing in popularity also because there's a lot of veyron and she run owners now right and they look back and they're not gonna go out and buy a type 35 or something like that I know they think this is the closest they'll get right so this really connects the dots between the pre-war and post-war Bugattis now the modern Bugatti Factory the Veyron factory which is owned the course by VW do they honor any of this so that they have nothing to do with it they do they do a lot of actually so they really realized that this is a real poor Guardian it has a place in history yeah it really does because it is as you said it's a true Bugatti and an honors and terrible Gaudi in it and this was actually probably closer to what he envisioned a car to be you know it has a proper manual gearbox yeah you know it's it's complex fascinating engine you know it's lightweight what does this weight you know 3400 pounds 560 is horse power yeah yeah which was unbelievable back in the day yeah that was just to put this in perspective with 560 horsepower I remember when I I went in to look at a Dodge Viper but you just come out salesman said this guy's phone osbahr you will never see foreign horse power over again with the emissions and everything this is the last 400 hotspot and of course it's like an idiot I fell for that I said well alright I'd better buy one now because no guys see far of course the next year 450 they come out but at the time people forget what the 90s were like cars were giving strangled emission wise you know yeah but you know I'm one of those people believe engineers can fix anything and they and they did and now you have super cars with a thousand horsepower p1 906 horsepower and reliable and everything else but this is sort of the last of the analog supercars it's it's the end of an era yeah it's really fascinating and it's a really good looking car too I just find it the only thing I thought was odd was the dashboard was not impressive yeah you know when I kind of like oh this kind of seems it's like it's like a piece of wood and it's got some tiles in it looks like a Jaguar from you yeah I didn't it didn't have that Italian flair I mean you look at the wheels and you go look how much effort went into these yeah look at these we I mean just a beautiful wheel and it mimics the Grand Prix car of the 30s and it's not overly done it doesn't you know I hate when I see these wheels with you know so maybe four spokes and they're all shiny and this it's muted it's not chrome it has a nice the only thing that let me down a little bit like as I said was the dashboard I thought I just look sort of regular yeah not bad I thought their what they thought was when you're gonna take this out and drive it fast you just need whatever info you're I know like rpm and speed and that's basically it so yeah but it's like marrying a girl with a pretty face it's what you're gonna be looking at a little breakfast table of the morning you know kind of go okay so soon you looked at today because that that because that's what's driving when I don't like but I loved everything else about it yeah I remember when this came in at the Auto Show I I don't remember if you could have bought them in the United States at that time or not you could actually so they had orders for 15 20 cars for the US and they were in the process of doing crash tests so they did in Germany because - and Germany could actually do it as well right with the u.s. regulations but things just went sideways you know I never really got to build the u.s. console and how many cars were they into when they realize this isn't working I like 6080 look probably a hundred cos or so I would think and then at some point when the other when the competition in the local area went out to the other suppliers know you can't really supply anything more to these guys they really had to be creative so a lot of the last cars were put together with whatever they had here from earlier prototype engines they took back put him in cars and they just tried to because they had to keep the business running yeah when they did the f1 McLaren they were supposed to build 300 for the first year but they only sold 64 I mean half the number of this so this seemed like a raging success mm-hm the time compared to McLaren f1 yeah and for a while I remember in the just about the turn of the century 2001 to these probably reached their lowest point you could get them for maybe two hundred and twenty thousand dollars something like that but now they're appreciated again and now they're going crazy yeah and it's become an icon have you met any other owners is there like an owner's club you kind of operate and where can I get this gas yeah I know a few of the other owners I actually bought one last year a single owner car yeah buddy of mine who had it from brand-new yeah and he had in Germany and bought it over there drove at 300 kilometers then he wanted to take it to the factory he bought it very late in 95 take it to the factory for the thousand kilometer service so he drove from his home in Germany to the factory and arrived the day they were declared bank robber so when he got there they were on satellites and they were the gates were locked on England so he had to take a tender more Italian and exit what does the can you open the rear compartment yeah yeah let's take a look now see this I wish my p1 open like this so you could all the way up I'd like that yeah it will hold yeah there we go boy that's crammed in there in there yeah yeah yeah it's not looking like an xj220 yeah I know well see that was another thing the 220 was supposed to have this v12 with four-wheel drive and that turned into a v6 and you know this was in my opinion everything the 220 wasn't right right they did they agree with that wholeheartedly and the front end won't open the front yeah I think so we have our battery up here and not not a lot of you might get a toothbrush in there but where is there any luggage in this there's no luggage with the cop but it has room for it behind the seats so there was a luggage you could buy but that's super rare yeah yeah Wow okay yeah and of course yeah as I said it's all wheel drive so you've got differentials and everything else over how many miles on this one ten thousand five hundred miles okay so yeah well I'm anxious to hear it run I've had that engine for 25 years sitting there we've never fired or done anything to it so to see it in action is gonna be exciting come on let's uh yeah let's close this up and we wanna see what you can do just lift it up in there yep close it over there as well here we go yep there we go another thing I like about this arrow supercars like my McLaren f1 it has this tool kit I don't know what you actually fixed with it did this come with the toolkit as well yeah door sacks yeah yeah I like to - looks like you're bringing your box of chocolates yeah so detailing here it's made to look like the curved axle exactly the same with the lockets yeah okay you got your oh wow look at that get your toe strap here no pliers will not something completely useless these never work you put them on they go for you and they just dribble on the floor and you still have a flat tire but I only got extra fuses and now see them actually the F one's got you because they have one these are titanium so they're very so but well you got smart a lot like Paul that lightbulbs okay Wow pretty cool right it's a neat little tool kit in it no you're gonna be sitting by the side of the road fixing your EB 110 but yeah Oh turbocharger came off let me get the tool kit and I'll put that right back on there cool alright let's put that back on the car hopefully you won't we won't need it and thank you [Music] I've had that engine I've never heard it run gearbox very smooth also when you really spank it you know when you go to the high rep this downshifting hard and so on it very proper gearbox and how much was this kindness there are amazake around 400 but you know what's right comes up to me the worst thing that ever happened to all these causes these were camera racing seeds to get in you know I Drive my people wanted for long distances I'd like to be comfortable it's on a crimp you know I made I got the optional bigger seat that goes the Barcalounger seat but it's hardly that but you know this is actually nice and you're you're nicely ensconced in here you know it's not like you fall out of the chair going around corners no no and they're doing you know next year they have the 30th anniversary of these cars and it's the and it's the hundredth anniversary of Bugatti making cost yeah so they will have a big rally boy it really is it and you can trim the tires the four-wheel drive that's pretty good yeah I mean what's those turbo spool up it's really it's really something that's the address of this car is family you got a manual transmission it feels very visceral it feels like you're actually driving the car the car's not driving you you know yeah it's really not much bigger than a 911 Porsche is about the same size four point three meters right now does this require is there a special tire made just for this car yeah so you Michelin made better ways and do a run of those but again you can get everything yeah that hot together that's close to 70% a little more than 70% going to the rear and 27 30% going to I remember what the most fascinating aspect of this car was they were coming up with some sort of green oil that once you ran it through the car you can actually just dump it on the ground and it would fire the grade but that never came to fruition in it I'm not sure they never had they got to use it really I know they were working on it and I they got a real product out and but I'm not sure they got to use it but again that just shows how far out they went they thought about everything that we are compromised anywhere I mean that seems like you know the impossible because the carbon in the byproduct of fuel being burned you think there wouldn't be green at all I was an alpha that what you said and they made their own gearbox - it's a very nice gearbox it was developed at the factory to see effort somebody get ojos de both at the factory boy have you been to the factory I haven't not yet it won't be fun to see it just subtle looks like looks like Atlantis the middle of the ocean you know just looks like an abandoned dream world you know just a beautiful exotic looking building and as I said before it looks like it's been there for a hundred years he knows vines growing over things and it's really rather sad it's amazing so what 50 there up yeah 450 I think really Wow six-hundred she rocks at three and a half million each and then they're doing the Deebo now which is the new one at five you know what I thought was bad with what the gambling and the four-door I thought that was a perfect big motor you take four feet and it seems like a win-win to me but I yeah these are now accepted by the Garden Club of America as a real Bugatti oh they are yeah so you can actually take them on the rallies and you know yeah anymore like you know I wouldn't be a real Bugatti yeah he bought the name he built a car dad he build it right it was not just like he modified something else right now I mean anytime you build your own engine and transmission and it's unusual to get it right the first time you know that there's the second generation and although we fix the oiling problem we make up this motor right the first time yeah and who built the motor were they ex Lamborghini Ferrari guys of yes a lot of them work [Music] and that's why he had to do it in kombucha ya know yeah because he had to be close to the two factories right in order to get the right people they wanted to do it in France but you know they just couldn't get people to move yeah yeah I think it's a little different with Volkswagen now and all time I'm surprised nobody's won that Factory I mean it's very much a normal car I say that as a compliment you can actually drive it and use it I know I expected engine to be peaky and everything like that but it it's very tractable certainly feels like a lot bonds 3.5 liters I think their goal was to make it like very drivable like an old Bugatti would be yet like small nimble well and you've got an 8500 rpm redline which is yeah and it just always beg for yeah yeah and who did the brakes on this for the Grandpa's Rev oh yeah the gearbox is very nice I know I was expecting not G and you know but very nice yeah and in the SS you know this is aluminum instead right is different a bucket seats and so on yeah the 90s was that whole error of the last of their manual transmission cars I think the Porsche Carrera GT is the last one to have a manual gearbox built specifically for the car that's another fantastic that's a wonderful part you know no trouble it's a bit too low to the ground I mean I love my Carrera GT but you know I put the factory lift kit in its that are gone because you know so you still scrape he just don't scrape it's hard and that's a fantastic ending oh my god I love the sound of it yeah he sounds like an old form of wallet yeah which is I know what it is it was built for racing and then they realize out alley get away with that so you gotta stop with this moment this car is 25 years old next year it's going to be 30 cents day percent of the ya-ya and a hundred years since Bugatti was started by France yes sir there's going to be a lot of stuff in 2019 about the ev1 table guardian general you know it's a big year for them well Stefan thank you very much it's been a dream come true too since a Saturday the Auto Show like 25 years ago or something like that come by anytime thanks hell yeah thank you very much you'd be 110 doesn't get any cooler this see you guys next week thanks [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 1,232,896

Rating: 4.9313455 out of 5

Keywords: Bugatti, EB110, GT, V12, 4 wheel drive, mid-engine, French car, Romano Artioli, Ettore Bugatti, supercar, Michael Schumacher, carporn, engine on stand, quad turbos, Steffan Frisk, Formula Selected, 90s car, Radwood, sports car, exotic cars, European cars, road test, Bugatti Club, Bugatti blue, Derek Hill, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28

Id: mxS2ZYzrUdI

Length: 35min 24sec (2124 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 20 2019