Bugatti does not build many cars like the Bugatti Type 8: a Roadster with see table, built from 1906 to 1909 when a car was a rich man's adventure and every maker was a workshop. Its designer of record is Ettore Bugatti.
How it came about
The Type 8 and Type 9 were cars designed by Ettore Bugatti for Deutz from 1907 to 1910. These used extremely Undersquare Inline 4's. The only version of the car that raced was under the name "Prinz Henri", which was the official model name of the code 8A-S and 9A. The car proved to be innefective at racing, because the chassis of the Type 8, without an engine or body, would weigh as much as 935.0 kilograms (2,061.3 pounds), with the later Type 9's only reducing the weight to 880.0 kilograms (1,940.1 pounds).
The hardware
Under the skin sits see table. The gearbox is a 4-speed manual. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The wheelbase is 3098-3280 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Where it sits in Bugatti's history is not in doubt: the Bugatti Type 6 came before it; the Bugatti Type 10 followed it; it was built at Cologne, Germany. On a showroom list of its day it stood against the Ford Model T, the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, the British Motor Corporation Austin 15/20. Its Bugatti stablemates include the Bugatti 57 Galibier and the Bugatti 8-cylinder line.
The money
There is no federal ownership record for the Bugatti Type 8 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.