Bugatti, one of the most legendary marques of all time, bears the name of Ettore Bugatti, who built his first automobile in 1898. In the first years of the 20th century, Bugatti designed several very important cars while working for other manufacturers. Following the factory’s move to Molsheim, the German town in Alsace, France, success abounded for Bugatti well into the mid-1930s, but the company fell on hard times soon thereafter. Ettore died in 1947 and the company lost direction. Bugatti ceased production completely in 1956.

After passing through the hands of several owners, the Bugatti name was purchased in 1991 by Italian businessman Romano Artioli, seeking to revive the fabled marque to its former glory with a new supercar. Artioli’s Bugatti Automobili S.p.A. produced just 139 total examples of the quad-turbo 3.5-litre V-12 EB110 and a later variant called the EB110 Super Sport (shortened to SS), boasting even more performance with a top speed of 216 mph of which only 36 were built. The car offered here, chassis no. PCD39006, is a factory prototype of the SS variant and is, consequently, an ultra-rare and hugely significant automobile fit for any Bugatti connoisseur.

Manufactured in early 1993, the car was intended to be used for body developments and was used in April of 1993 for homologation testing. Completed in June of 1993 with two-wheel drive and fitted with engine number 009, the car was used for fuel consumption homologation testing and afterwards, was later fitted with the standard four-wheel drive system and received a new and very special Super Sport engine, engine, no. 0026, the unit previously fitted to the prototype C7 (serial no. MCD39006 deconstructed) that was used to set the EB110’s world speed record in 1992 at 342.7 km/h.

Further to this, it was used as a test bed for the evaluation of several other modifications. The factory-spec EB110 had a significant issue with fuel delivery. The car had two separate fuel tanks and fillers, one for each bank of the 3.5-litre V-12 engine. This caused the engine to run on only six cylinders if one tank ran dry before the other. The prototype introduced a dual tank with a single filler to eliminate this problem, and also featured a revised gear shifter and lightweight carbon fibre engine cover, modifications not seen on other EB110s.

Mr Artioli’s company went into administration in 1995, and this car was sold to its first private owner in 1997. It was part of the Marin De Rijn Collection in the Netherlands until 2015, when it was purchased by the consignor. With him the car was shown at Salon Privé, where it received Best in Class honours.