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| The 57S Gangloff Atalante above, and
Paweł Czyzewski's interpretation below ALWYN VILJOEN and he had dialogue. |
WHO says bus builders
have no style?
First there was Belgium
coach and bus builders Jonckheere, who commissioned Turkish designer Ugur Sahin
to recreate the blinged-up Rolls they originally built for the Raja of Nanpara
in 1935.
Now Paweł Czyzewski, a
young Polish designer, has gone back to the days when cars had curves with
class. The self-taught Czyzewski has been sketching cars since he got his first
Porsche 911 toy car, and opted to use the 57S Gangloff Atalante to inspire his
pupil-dilatingly pretty Bugatti.
As he told us in heavily accented English: “This beautiful machine …
raised my curiosity. On the other hand, it has caused sadness, because these
days no one makes [these] grand works of art.”
Using a translating
programme to answer our questions, he said he had not yet thought about his
Gangloff concept being built and had no ideas on the drivetrain or
suspension.
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| This screensaver vision by self-taught Polish designer
Paweł Czyzewski had car fans agog this week. |
He just hopes “that
automotive companies will see me and I will get to the workshop in one of the
car companies. This is my aim to achieve.”
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| The proposed interior of the Bugatti Gangloff concept. |
He used 3D Studio Max
software to render the interior and exterior visuals, working from rough
sketches. These took him “about 1,5 month” and “working on it in 3D Studio Max
took me about another 1,5 month”.
‘The greatest
barn find ever’
The 57S is better known
among veteran car hunters as “the greatest barn-find ever”.
This after its last
owner, John W. Strauss, the grandson of the founder of Macy’s department stores,
parked this Bugatti in a barn in New York in 1962, where it was forgotten until
2007.
When it was found, a
mechanic attended to the 69-year old hosing and changed the 45-year-old oil. The
3,3-litre, 160 Bhp was then handcrancked and started on the first try.
Czyzewski’s designs
based on the lines of the 57S have this week attracted more hits to his site
(53906 and counting) than any of his other car and wristwatch creations.
But, as is the case with
all other concept cars that exist only on a screen, Czyzewski’s design probably
can only become a reality when 3D printing or large panels become affordable.
And even then, its ultra-low coupé lines will make it difficult to get in and
out of — as was the case with the original Ford GT40, which was also 101,6
centimetres high.
The original
designer
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| A BIT LOW: Getting in and out of this will be like going to gym. |
The Bugatti chosen by
Czyzewski was probably built by Georges Gangloff in 1938.
His legacy, the
Gangloff company, is still a Swiss-French coach-building company, which has been
panel beating trucks and tram cabins in Berne since 1923.
Its roots, however, go
back a 110 years to 1903, when Gangloff built coaches for gentlemen friends like
Royce, Bugatti and Benz, as well as now-forgotten names like Martini, Delage and
Ansaldo.
Because Gangloff was a
frequent visitor at the Molsheim factory, historic car buffs today argue at
length whether it was Ettore Bugatti who penned the curves on the 1938 Bugatti
coupé, or his friend Gangloff.
But it was Gangloff’s
mechanics who, at some point in the forties, added a supercharger to the
3,3-litre engine, giving it an extra 25 horses; and it was this 57S that ended
up in a barn.
Has Czyzewski done the
original 57S justice with his homage to Gangloff? You be the judge.
