00:00 (upbeat music)
00:01 This couldn't just be a looks like the Aerolith.
00:05 It had to be an absolute recreation of the Aerolith.
00:08 If somebody found the original car,
00:11 it's worth 100 million, 150 million dollars,
00:14 and it is one of the great mysteries
00:16 in the automotive world.
00:17 (gentle music)
00:22 The Aerolith, Bugatti's long lost magnesium masterpiece.
00:27 Only one was ever built.
00:30 And it was panned by critics after its appearance
00:33 at the 1936 Paris Motor Show.
00:36 Shortly after, it disappeared from the public eye.
00:40 What happened next remains a mystery.
00:43 With almost no chance of the original ever being found,
00:48 for one car fanatic, there was only one option.
00:52 Build one from scratch, and that would be no mean feat.
00:59 This is the Bugatti Aerolith.
01:00 It's a Type 57, chassis number 57104.
01:03 It's probably one of the most famous cars around right now.
01:06 The original car was made from magnesium.
01:10 Well, we've made this car from magnesium.
01:12 And what is with the unusual choice of material?
01:15 Why magnesium?
01:16 Well, the reason for that was it's very light.
01:19 It's very durable, but it has some very bad habits.
01:22 It cracks, you can't weld it.
01:25 The entire car had to be riveted together.
01:27 In order to work this material,
01:29 you have to heat it to 850, 900 degrees to make it malleable.
01:33 Unfortunately, at 1140 degrees, it bursts into flames.
01:37 We did have fires while we were working it.
01:40 It was just a part of it.
01:42 So you heat it to a plastic state
01:44 just before it starts to melt.
01:46 Unfortunately, that state is like 850 or 900 degrees,
01:49 which when you're using a rosebud
01:50 is not very far away from 1140 degrees.
01:54 It became a very practiced thing.
01:57 The guys who were working it
01:58 learned to just watch the magnesium
02:01 and see the color alterations in it
02:03 when it got to the right temperature
02:04 and be warned just before it started
02:06 to get to a point where it was gonna ignite.
02:09 It was a very dicey, quite a skill to acquire,
02:11 one that's not gonna be very useful
02:13 for the rest of your life,
02:14 but in this case, it worked for us quite well.
02:16 And as if this build wasn't hard enough already,
02:19 in a quest for authenticity,
02:21 the team decided not to use any tools.
02:24 Invented after 1936.
02:26 This couldn't just be a looks like the Aerolith.
02:30 It had to be an absolute recreation of the Aerolith.
02:33 Was it a happy build?
02:35 Sometimes I hated this thing.
02:36 I'd like to have torched it.
02:37 What we had was about 11 photographs.
02:41 There was two blueprints.
02:42 One was of the brake pedal
02:44 and the other was of the radiator.
02:46 There was virtually nothing.
02:48 With the photograph overlaying it,
02:49 we indexed the exact center
02:52 of every single rivet on the spine.
02:54 Every rivet on that card
02:55 was exactly where the rivets were on the original.
02:57 With painstaking attention to detail,
03:00 recreating this masterpiece took 10 years.
03:03 The doors are magnificent.
03:05 They're very large and very heavy.
03:06 The seats are very simple.
03:09 The only thing from the Bugatti factory
03:11 you see in here is the steering wheel.
03:13 Everything else we had to hand make.
03:16 Every single one of these had to be cut out by hand
03:18 and then placed, and then it was all vulcanized on.
03:22 The wheels, of course, are all brand new.
03:25 The center spinners, those are original.
03:28 When you look at this motor,
03:29 you can see that it's just not an ordinary engine.
03:33 Like a work of art.
03:34 Again, beautiful to look at.
03:36 The front of the car is interesting and very pretty,
03:38 but the back of the car is my favorite part
03:41 of almost any car I've ever had anything to do with.
03:44 I mean, I think that the back of this car
03:45 is just so beautiful and so futuristic for its period.
03:48 Something that very few people have ever seen is this.
03:54 But it makes complete sense when you see it.
03:56 And again, everything you're seeing here, we had to make.
03:59 Now we consider this just the ultimate
04:04 in style and sophistication and beauty,
04:07 because it is absolutely stunning.
04:10 Stunning indeed, but what's it like to drive?
04:16 (car screeching)
04:19 (car revving)
04:22 A lot of people say, "Oh, they don't build 'em
04:27 "like they used to."
04:27 And they are absolutely right.
04:29 They don't.
04:30 Like, there's no windows that wind up and down.
04:32 There's no ventilation, there's no windshield wipers.
04:34 When you're in there, you're sealed in.
04:36 As cars go, this isn't the most usable car in the world,
04:40 but as art goes, it's an absolute masterpiece.
04:44 You don't wanna go rockin' and rollin'
04:45 too much with a car that's worth
04:46 in excess of $5 million.
04:48 So it's top dollar, but what about top speed?
04:52 Fast as this particular car has gone,
04:54 probably 40 miles an hour.
04:56 While this beauty's not going to break any speed records,
05:04 if the original was to be found, it would break the bank.
05:08 It's been lost since 1936 or 1937.
05:13 If somebody found the original car,
05:16 now, it's worth 100 million, $150 million.
05:20 I mean, it is one of the great mysteries
05:22 in the automotive world.
05:23 What happened to the Bugatti Aerolisse?
05:25 (upbeat music)
05:28 (upbeat music)
05:30 (upbeat music)
05:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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