Bugatti Type 13

This is the catalogue record of the Bugatti Type 13, one of 201 models Bugatti has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The record places its introduction in 1907. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

To read the Bugatti Type 13 properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1900s were the pioneering years, when motoring was still an adventure for the wealthy, roads were unpaved, and every manufacturer was effectively an experimental workshop. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Ford Ford Model T, the Lion-Peugeot Lion-Peugeot Type VA, the Rover Rover 20 — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Bugatti Type 13 reads like this: the record lists its engine as 1131 cc Deutz-Bugatti derived I4; quoted output is 10 PS / 17 Nm; kerb weight is recorded at 365 kg; drive goes through 4-Speed Manual; the layout is Front Engine, RWD. Worked together, those figures give roughly 27 horsepower per tonne — the single number that says more about how a car actually moves than any of its parts alone. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear. Production is recorded at 435 units, which makes it a genuine rarity — most enthusiasts will never see one in person.

Its place in the Bugatti story

Within Bugatti's own catalogue the Bugatti Type 13 sits alongside the Bugatti 57 Galibier, the Bugatti 8-cylinder line, the Bugatti Centodieci, the Bugatti Type 14. The record names the Bugatti Type 9C-A as its predecessor, anchoring one end of its lineage. Design is credited to Ettore Bugatti. Assembly is recorded at Germany: Molsheim, Alsace.

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

Why concepts and prototypes are in the library

Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.

From catalogue to ownership

The catalogue records what the Bugatti Type 13 was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.