00:00This couldn't just be a looks like the Aerolith. It had to be an absolute recreation of the Aerolith.
00:08If somebody found the original car, it's worth $100 million, $150 million.
00:14It is one of the great mysteries in the automotive world.
00:21The Aerolith. Bugatti's long-lost magnesium masterpiece.
00:26Only one was ever built.
00:30And it was panned by critics after its appearance at the 1936 Paris Motor Show.
00:37Shortly after, it disappeared from the public eye.
00:41What happened next remains a mystery.
00:45With almost no chance of the original ever being found.
00:49For one car fanatic, there was only one option.
00:53Build one from scratch.
00:56And that would be no mean feat.
00:59This is the Bugatti Aerolith. It's a Type 57, chassis number 57104.
01:03It's probably one of the most famous cars around right now.
01:07The original car was made from magnesium.
01:10Well, we've made this car from magnesium.
01:12And what is with the unusual choice of material?
01:15Why magnesium?
01:16Well, the reason for that was it's very light.
01:19It's very durable, but it has some very bad habits.
01:22It cracks.
01:24You can't weld it.
01:25The entire car had to be riveted together.
01:27In order to work this material, you have to heat it to 850, 900 degrees to make it malleable.
01:33Unfortunately, at 1140 degrees, it bursts into flames.
01:37We did have fires while we were working it.
01:40It was just a part of it.
01:42So you heat it to a plastic state just before it starts to melt.
01:46Unfortunately, that state is like 850 or 900 degrees,
01:49which when you're using a rosebud is not very far away from 1140 degrees.
01:54It became a very practiced thing.
01:57The guys who were working it learned to just watch the magnesium
02:01and see the color alterations in it when it got to the right temperature
02:05and be warned just before it started to get to a point where it was going to ignite.
02:09It was a very dicey, quite a skill to acquire,
02:12one that's not going to be very useful for the rest of your life,
02:14but in this case, it worked for us quite well.
02:17And as if this build wasn't hard enough already,
02:19in a quest for authenticity, the team decided not to use any tools,
02:24invented after 1936.
02:27This couldn't just be a looks like the Aerolith.
02:30It had to be an absolute recreation of the Aerolith.
02:33Was it a happy build?
02:35Sometimes I hated this thing. I'd like to have torched it.
02:38What we had was about 11 photographs.
02:41There was two blueprints.
02:42One was of the brake pedal and the other was of the radiator.
02:46There was virtually nothing.
02:48With the photograph overlaying it,
02:50we indexed the exact center of every single rivet on the spine.
02:54Every rivet on that car is exactly where the rivets were on the original.
02:58With painstaking attention to detail, recreating this masterpiece took 10 years.
03:03The doors are magnificent. They're very large and very heavy.
03:07The seats are very simple.
03:09The only thing from the Bugatti factory you see in here is the steering wheel.
03:13Everything else we had to hand make.
03:15Every single one of these had to be cut out by hand and then placed,
03:19and then it was all vulcanized on.
03:22The wheels, of course, are all brand new.
03:25The center spinners, those are original.
03:28When you look at this motor, you can see that it's just not an ordinary engine.
03:33Like a work of art.
03:34Again, beautiful to look at.
03:36The front of the car is interesting and very pretty,
03:38but the back of the car is my favorite part of almost any car I've ever had anything to do with.
03:44I mean, I think that the back of this car is just so beautiful and so futuristic for its period.
03:50Something that very few people have ever seen is this.
03:54But it makes complete sense when you see it.
03:56And again, everything you're seeing here, we had to make.
03:59Now we consider this just the ultimate in style and sophistication and beauty,
04:07because it is absolutely stunning.
04:12Stunning indeed.
04:14But what's it like to drive?
04:25A lot of people say, oh, they don't build them like they used to.
04:28And they are absolutely right. They don't.
04:30Like, there's no windows that wind up and down.
04:32There's no ventilation. There's no windshield wipers.
04:34When you're in there, you're sealed in.
04:37As cars go, this isn't the most usable car in the world.
04:40But as art goes, it's an absolute masterpiece.
04:44You don't want to go rocking and rolling too much with a car that's worth in excess of $5 million.
04:49So it's top dollar. But what about top speed?
04:52Fast as this particular car has gone, probably 40 miles an hour.
04:58But what about the car?
05:01While this beauty is not going to break any speed records,
05:04if the original was to be found, it would break the bank.
05:10It's been lost since 1936 or 1937.
05:13If somebody found the original car, now it's worth $100 million, $150 million.
05:20I mean, it is one of the great mysteries in the automotive world.
05:23What happened to the Bugatti Air release?
05:25What happened to the Bugatti Air release?
05:26.
05:28.
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