Bugatti Magnum (Limited First Edition)

CONWAY, Hugh (with Maurice Sauzay). Bugatti Magnum. Sparkford: G. T. Foulis (Haynes Publishing Group), 1989.

Large 4to (34 x 25.3cm). Original blue publisher's cloth. Illustrated vignette of the Bugatti logo to cover. Spine lettered in silver. 559, [i] pp. Approximately 800 monochrome and 73 colour illustrations throughout, including photographs, technical drawings, and design sketches, many published for the first time. Housed in original decorative slipcase with engine-turned aluminium-effect finish and engraved brass "chassis plate." First edition, limited to 2,000 numbered copies (English text issue), this being number 209.

Bugatti Magnum was, by wide consensus among motoring bibliophiles, the automotive book event of 1989. It is the most comprehensive single volume ever produced on the marque, and one that sold out with unusual speed for a book of its size, price, and specialist subject matter. It remains, more than three decades on, widely regarded by Bugatti enthusiasts as the definitive reference work on the marque's complete production history.

Hugh G. Conway (1917–1989) had already established himself, across several earlier books including Bugatti: Le Pur-Sang des Automobiles, as the pre-eminent English-language authority on Ettore Bugatti and his cars; a scholarly reputation built over decades of research into chassis histories, technical specifications, and the extraordinary breadth of Bugatti's design activity beyond the automobile. Bugatti Magnum was conceived as Conway's crowning achievement in the field: a complete cataloguing of Bugatti's entire range of touring, sports, and racing cars, extending through to the final Bugatti EB110 designs of the late 1980s, together with Ettore Bugatti's often-overlooked work in railcars, aeroplanes, aero-engines, boats, and horse-drawn carriages, and his numerous patents and design methods. Conway died in 1989, before the book's completion, and Maurice Sauzay saw the work through to publication, making the finished volume both the definitive Bugatti reference and, in the words of one specialist motoring bookseller, "a fitting memorial to the late Hugh Conway."

Bound in blue cloth with the Bugatti marque emblem stamped to the cover and spine, and issued in a slipcase finished to resemble the polished engine-turned aluminium of a Bugatti crankcase each of the 2,000 numbered copies of the English edition carries its own engraved brass "chassis plate" bearing its individual number, a detail that directly echoes the chassis identification plates fitted to genuine Bugatti automobiles. The book was published simultaneously in four countries and four languages, a measure of the international reach of Bugatti collecting and enthusiast culture by the late 1980s.

Near fine in near fine slipcase. Some very minor rubbing to spine lettering; volume otherwise presents as new. Slipcase shows some shelf wear, particularly to the top surface. Overall, a lovely copy that has been very well preserved.

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Catalogue Number: HH000282