Bugatti EB110 Blasts Out of the Past and Into Jay Leno’s Garage
Before the Veyron, there was the EB110: A ’90s supercar with a V12, all-wheel drive, and four turbos.
There are two main types of Bugatti production cars: those built before WWII and those made after it. Bugatti wasn’t totally dead right after WWII, but it certainly wasn’t the company it was before the war. The global conflict and the death of founder Ettore Bugatti in 1947 took its toll on the French automaker, which caused the company to cease operations in the 1950s. In the 1980s, Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli brought Bugatti back to life with its first new model in decades: the EB110.
Bugatti Automobili S.p.A. built the EB110 in an impressive factory in Campogalliano, Modena, Italy. Like other supercars of the 1990s, it didn’t last long. The EB110 debuted in 1991; by the middle of the decade, it was gone. There aren’t many out there, but a man named Steffan Frisk bought one. He recently brought his 1993 EB110 on the program Jay Leno’s Garage to show it to America’s most famous car enthusiast.
Naturally, it reminds Leno of the other supercars of the ’90s, such as the McLaren F1 and Jaguar XJ220. Despite being 25 years old, the EB110’s fast, dramatic lines don’t look dated to Leno, the way an ’80s Lamborghini does. That angular bodywork sits on top of a carbon fiber chassis and contains one of the EB110’s most impressive features: an engine and transmission manufactured in house. Rather than subcontracting out the construction of the motor and gearbox, Bugatti built their own. To keep weight down, they gave the V12 just 3.5 liters of displacement. A quartet of turbochargers make up the difference in power and give the EB110 552 horsepower. That’s routed through a bespoke six-speed manual and all-wheel drive. As Frisk puts it, “They started out with a blank piece of paper and they just wanted to do everything over the top.” Mission accomplished.
Shockingly, Frisk says his car’s engine is “super reliable.” When he does need it serviced, he has some of the guys who worked at the original EB110 factory turn their wrenches on it (the ultimate form of “I know a guy who…”). Leno has had an EB110 engine of his own for 25 years, but has only used it for decoration so he’s not aware of how it feels when the turbos are pumping boost into the tiny yet mighty V12.
That all changes when he and Frisk open up the EB110’s scissor doors and slip into the leather- and wood-lined cockpit. It’s a hit and a miss for Leno. While he enjoys the way the driver’s seat feels, the dashboard is a bit of a letdown in terms of its aesthetics. As someone who takes his McLaren P1 on long trips, Leno enjoys how livable the EB110 seems. He says, “It’s very much a normal car. I say that as a compliment. You can actually drive it and use it. I don’t know why I expected this engine to be peaky and everything like that. But … it’s very tractable.” The six-speed stick’s smoothness also comes as a pleasant surprise.
Unfortunately, a combination of factors, including global currency exchange rates and an alleged conspiracy by Bugatti’s competitors to keep suppliers from doing business with it, made the EB110 a short chapter in automotive history. The good news is that VW eventually picked up where Artioli left off and continued the story with even more outrageous machines.
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