Bugatti Type 57SC Atalante, Black & Yellow

By the mid-1930s the look of every Bugatti was in the hands of Jean Bugatti, Ettore's son, and the Type 57 was his car from the outset. The Atalante, named after Atalanta, the fleet-footed huntress of Greek myth, was his two-seat coupé for the lowered 57S chassis: a long bonnet behind the horseshoe grille, wings that flow back in one sweep, and a cabin tucked low between them under a single-piece windscreen, without the riveted dorsal seam of its sister, the Atlantic. Only seventeen Atalantes were built on the 57S. Jean's career was cut short in August 1939, when he was killed at the age of 30 testing the Type 57 that had just won Le Mans.

Here the coupé is painted black with a vivid yellow sweep that runs over the roof and down across the doors, and the cabin is trimmed in a soft salmon-pink leather with matching carpets. Both doors and the bonnet sides open: under the bonnet the straight-eight sits beside a machine-turned bulkhead and engine-mounted horn, and the radiator wears its red enamel Bugatti badge and a domed filler cap. A burr-walnut dashboard, a wood-rimmed steering wheel, black wire wheels with chrome centre-lock nuts and French plates reading 7828-Z75 fill out the detail. It is a large-scale model, substantial on the shelf.