Bugatti and Auto Age

The beginning of my professional journalism...

In front of me I have the typescript of the first article that I wrote for commercial publication. Titled “Bugatti and the Future”, it speculated about the design of the new Grand Prix car that Bugatti was building for the 1955 season. This is pretty abstruse stuff. What put this exotic bee in my bonnet?

            It was the autumn of 1954 and I’d just arrived in Brooklyn to start my studies in industrial design at Pratt Institute. All the wonders of New York City lay before me, just a subway ride away. This included tiny mid-town bookshop R. Gordon, specialists in automotive books and magazines. Needless to say I soon became a good customer.

            Among my early purchases at Gordon’s was a copy of Bugantics, yellow-jacketed organ of the Bugatti Owners Club. Its editor reported on a journalistic coup, a visit to the Bugatti factory at Molsheim during which he was allowed to photograph components of the new GP racer’s engine. He also published specifications of the coming Type 251, though they were noncommittal about the car’s layout.

            Intrigued by design features of the engine parts he depicted, I set about the first of my many photo-interpretation efforts. It was clear from the design of its crankcase that power would be taken from the center of the crankshaft of the Bugatti’s straight-eight engine instead of from the end as usual. I commented on this in my article, noting a similarity with the straight-eight engine of the Mercedes-Benz W196. In the French car’s case I speculated that the engine would be rear-mounted, probably longitudinally.

            I indulged in further speculation about the potential of Bugatti’s design. “It would now be possible to derive real benefit from a transverse rather than a longitudinal orientation of the crankshaft,” I pontificated. I stopped short of suggesting that this was the actual design of the Type 251, but readied some sketches of what I thought such a transverse-engined Grand Prix car could look like. I laid its engine flat, its cylinder heads facing forward.

            Here was a pretty esoteric eight-page article, written in my garret room at 220A Willoughby Avenue. What was I going to do with it? It would make sense, I thought, to contact a car magazine based in New York. At the time there was only one of consequence, Auto Age. I sent off the story and my proposed illustrations and awaited developments.

            Some days later I was called to the phone by my landlord. On the line was Harvey Janes, one of the editors of Auto Age. The Bugatti story wasn’t up their street, he said, but they might be interested in other articles by someone who seemed to have a grasp of car technology. Could we meet? Could we! I arranged to see him at his Manhattan office.

            At the controls of Auto Age I found two editors. One was the bespectacled Janes, an affable character with a nice line in irony. The other was a glamorous brunette, Diana Bartley, entirely at home in the world of cars. Between them they assembled the eclectic content of this wide-ranging monthly. Grand Prix Bugattis weren’t in their line, they explained, but they were looking for someone to write technical stories for them. They were willing to take a chance on this 20-year-old industrial-design student.

            We talked about topics and settled on — of all things — an article about rear axles for my debut. I was interested in another theme, I told them. That summer I’d visited Ford as a guest of a Blue Oval executive, Fred Goodell, a friend of my father. He gave me a tour of the proving grounds in Dearborn, the compact site that once was Ford’s airport. Driving around, we saw a prototype that was unmistakably the coming Lincoln Continental. The subject of great speculation, this ultra-luxury model wasn’t expected on the market until 1956.

            From my recollection of the car I thought I could produce some reasonable drawings of the Continental-to-come. The Janes-Bartley team thought this would be a great idea. They cautioned, however, that I might not want my name linked with the story as it would be obvious that Mr. Goodell was responsible for the leak. I know now that such an indiscretion would have had little impact, but back then such scoops were rare and thought to have heavy consequences in Detroit’s executive suites.

            Enter Eric Nielssen. He married my middle name with my grandmother’s maiden name plus the insertion of an extra “s”. He had a byline on the axle story while the Continental sneak peek appeared anonymously. Before I knew it Eric was on the masthead of Auto Age as technical editor and busy writing articles for the magazine as the alter ego of a student at Pratt hip-deep in his design projects.

            Meanwhile Bugatti pressed on with its Grand Prix car. Unveiled at Entzheim Aerodrome on November 21, 1955, it did indeed have its engine in the rear and positioned transversely as well. Its cylinders were vertical instead of horizontal but otherwise the Type 251 was surprisingly close to my anticipation of it a year earlier. The GP car wasn’t a success, but I’ll always have a soft spot for this Bugatti model as the one that got me started on a career of writing about interesting cars, companies and people.