Classified of the week: Bugatti EB110 GT

Long before the Bugatti Chiron and Veyron came swinging with their monster quad-turbo engines came the EB110. And it was fast, and excellent.

The backdrop however, less excellent. It started off promisingly enough: Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli bought the rights to the brand in 1987 with the aim of building the first new Bugatti for decades. He created a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility and enlisted such motoring luminaries as Giampalo Bendini, Marcello Gandini to help design it. 

Each hypercar was equipped with a 3.5-litre quad-turbo V12, four-wheel drive, a 0-62mph time of 4.9 seconds and a top speed of 213mph. That 213mph figure meant that much like the Veyron, it was the fastest production car of its day. The Super Sport went even faster.

And the name? On the day of its release in September 1991 - outside the Palace of Versailles, no less - marked 110 years since Ettore Bugatti's birth.

This one is the EB110 GT, offered for sale by merchants of excellence Bingo Sports, it’s an original Japanese-market car with 14,000 kilometres on the clock, in that famous Bugatti Blue hue, and with a remarkably unmarked grey leather interior.

How much? Bingo Sports isn’t telling, but we’d guess many hundreds of thousands of Pounds. Short of a million, maybe, but big money nonetheless.  Looks like quite good value next to other supercars of the day.

What about Artioli's dream? His Bugatti went bankrupt in 1995 sadly, after just 139 EB110s had been built. So this remains one of the rarest Bugattis in the world.

Images: Bingo Sports