Monterey Car Week 2024 ended on Sunday with its signature event, the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. This year’s event brought 214 cars and their owners from 16 countries and 29 states onto the 18th fairway of the Pebble Beach Golf Links course to compete for dozens of awards. For the 10th time since the event was first held in 1950, the top prize, Best of Show, went to a Bugatti (which is tied with Mercedes-Benz for the most Best of Show awards). But the 1934 Type 59 Sports model that was driven to victory by its owner Fritz Burkard under a shower of yellow and white confetti was unlike any of its winning siblings.
For the first time ever, this year’s Best of Show was from the one of the event’s two preservation classes: L-1: Prewar Preservation and L-2: Postwar Preservation. The 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports from The Pearl Collection of Zug, Switzerland won first place in its individual class, beating out a 1938 Mercedes-Benz 770 Pullman limousine and a 1928 Aston Martin Sports Model “Feltham Flyer” Bertelli two-seater. It went on to defeat a 1948 Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport Saoutchik fastback coupé, 1934 Packard 1108 Twelve LeBaron Sport Phaeton, and 1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero concept by Bertone.
To make it to the top, the Type 59 Sports not only had to survive nearly a century, but also make it through the dangers of racing. According to Bugatti, it’s the first of the six existing Type 59 Sports racing cars and started life with a Type 57 chassis; that was soon swapped out for a new chassis designed for the next series of Grand Prix races. After a career that included third place at the Monaco Grand Prix and fourth place at the French Grand Prix in 1934, this car was converted into a sports car at the Bugatti factory, making it the only Grand Prix race car in the company’s history to undergo such a process.
To make the transformation into new chassis number 57248 complete, engineers tweaked the exterior, adding motorcycle mudguards, a small windshield, low-mounted headlights, and side doors. They also removed the supercharger from the 3.3-liter inline-8, equipped the engine with a new dual-pump oil tank, and installed a synchronized four-speed manual transmission.
Despite those changes, this Type 59 still had more racing ahead of it. “La Grand Mère” (Grandmother), as it was known by Bugatti mechanics in Molsheim, France, won the final Algerian Grand Prix and the Grand Prix de la Marne in 1937.
Originally blue, the bodywork was repainted black with yellow stripes – Belgian racing colors – for its next owner, Belgium’s King Leopold III. In 1967, a Belgian collector bought the car and kept it unrestored for approximately 20 years. Subsequent owners also left its race-scarred bodywork and scuffed leather seat alone. The most recent owner, Burkard, used a light touch while preserving this piece of Bugatti history, sealing the painted areas that showed patina and gently repairing damaged parts.
That restraint helped this Bugatti cross a different sort of finish line as a winner once again, decades after its official track days ended.
