00:00 00;01;10;12 - 00;01;22;22 Unknown
00:01 This couldn't just be a looks like the arrow. It had to be an absolute recreation of the
00:07 arrow. If somebody found the original car, it's worth 100 million, 150 million dollars.
00:14 And it is one of the great mysteries in the automotive world.
00:17 00;01;22;22 - 00;01;39;22 Unknown
00:18 The air relief Bugatti's long lost magnesium masterpiece. Only one was ever built.
00:28 00;01;39;22 - 00;01;50;22 Unknown
00:30 And it was panned by critics after its appearance at the 1936 Paris Motor Show. Shortly after,
00:38 it disappeared from the public eye. What happened next remains a mystery.
00:43 00;01;50;22 - 00;02;00;22 Unknown
00:45 With almost no chance of the original ever being found. For one car fanatic, there was
00:51 only one option. Build one from scratch, and that would be no mean feat.
00:58 00;02;00;22 - 00;02;10;22 Unknown
00:59 This is the Bugatti Aralith. It's a Type 57 chassis number 57104. It's probably one of
01:04 the most famous cars around right now. The original car was made from magnesium. Well,
01:10 we've made this car from magnesium.
01:12 00;02;10;22 - 00;02;22;22 Unknown
01:13 And what is with the unusual choice of material?
01:15 00;02;22;22 - 00;02;27;22 Unknown
01:16 Why magnesium? Well, the reason for that was it's very light. It's very durable, but it
01:21 has some very bad habits. It cracks. You can't weld it. The entire car had to be riveted
01:27 together. In order to work this material, you have to heat it to 850, 900 degrees to
01:32 make it malleable. Unfortunately, at 1140 degrees, it bursts into flames. We did have
01:39 fires while we were working it. It was just a part of it. So you heat it to a plastic
01:44 state just before it starts to melt.
01:46 00;02;27;22 - 00;02;49;00 Unknown
01:47 And the heat is like 850 or 900 degrees, which when you're using a rosebud is not very far
01:52 away from 1140 degrees. It became a very practiced thing. The guys who were working it learned
01:59 to just watch the magnesium and see the color alterations in it when it got to the right
02:04 temperature and be warned just before it started to get to a point where it was going to ignite.
02:09 It was a very dicey, quite a skill to acquire one that's not going to be very useful for
02:13 the rest of your life. But in this case, it worked for us quite well.
02:16 00;02;49;00 - 00;03;00;00 Unknown
02:17 And as if this build wasn't hard enough already in a quest for authenticity, the team decided
02:22 not to use any tools invented after 1936.
02:26 00;03;00;00 - 00;03;10;00 Unknown
02:27 This couldn't just be a looks like the Erelyth. It had to be an absolute recreation of the
02:33 Erelyth. Was it a happy build? Sometimes I hated this thing. I'd like to have torched
02:37 it. What we had was about 11 photographs. There was two blueprints. One was of the brake
02:43 pedal and the other was of the radiator. There was virtually nothing with the photograph
02:49 overlaying it.
02:50 00;03;10;00 - 00;03;22;00 Unknown
02:51 We indexed the exact center of every single rivet on the spine. Every rivet on that car
02:55 is exactly where the rivets were on the original.
02:58 With painstaking attention to detail, recreating this masterpiece took 10 years.
03:04 The doors are magnificent. They're very large and very heavy. The seats are very simple.
03:10 The only thing from the Bugatti factory you see in here is the steering wheel. Everything
03:14 else we had to hand make. Every single one of these had to be cut out by hand and then
03:19 placed and then it was all vulcanized on.
03:22 The wheels, of course, are all brand new. The center spinners, those are original. When
03:28 you look at this motor, you can see that it's just not an ordinary engine, like a work of
03:34 art. Again, beautiful to look at. The front of the car is interesting and very pretty,
03:38 but the back of the car is my favorite part of almost any car I've ever had anything to
03:43 do with. I mean, I think that the back of this car is just so beautiful and so futuristic
03:48 for its period.
03:50 Something that very few people have ever seen is this, but it makes complete sense when
03:55 you see it. And again, everything you're seeing here, we had to make. Now we consider this
04:04 just the ultimate in style and sophistication and beauty because it is absolutely stunning.
04:11 COMM: Stunning indeed, but what's it like to drive?
04:16 A lot of people say, "Oh, they don't build them like they used to." And they're absolutely
04:29 right. They don't. Like, there's no windows that wind up and down. There's no ventilation,
04:33 there's no windshield wipers. When you're in there, you're sealed in. As cars go, this
04:38 isn't the most usable car in the world, but as art goes, it's an absolute masterpiece.
04:44 You don't want to go rocking and rolling too much with a car that's worth in excess of
04:47 five million dollars.
04:48 COMM: So it's top dollar, but what about top speed?
04:52 Fast as this particular car has gone, probably 40 miles an hour.
05:01 COMM: While this beauty is not going to break any speed records, if the original was to
05:05 be found, it would break the bank.
05:08 It's been lost since 1936 or 1937. If somebody found the original car, now, is it worth a
05:18 hundred million, a hundred and fifty million dollars? I mean, it is one of the great mysteries
05:22 in the automotive world. What happened to the Bugatti Aerolisse?
05:27 you
05:28 you
05:29 you
05:32 you
05:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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