With Thee, Bug, I Plight My Troth

After several weeks of this the famous Bugatti crankshaft came out. Unlike most crankshafts, which are cast, this remarkable object was machined out of a solid billet of steel—journals, counterweights and all. "It's beautiful," I said. "A work of art," commented Charlie grudgingly. "Didn't nobody make that in a day. Well, no use just standing here looking at it." Somehow that's what happened, though, for almost two years.

In an effort to keep things going I fiddled around with trivial matters like scraping 25 years of gook off the chassis with a putty knife, getting small parts rebuilt and taking the eight-day stop clock to the watchmaker. From time to time Charlie would look at the parts scattered about his old, dingy shop and remark: "Yes, sir. We gotta be sober when we put that back together."

Finally Charlie got around to me. I found him with my pistons lined up on a workbench. "Watcha doin'?" I asked with as much casualness as I could muster. "Knurling up your pistons. Makes 'em a little larger." This, Charlie had reasoned, would compensate for the fact that pistons and cylinder walls had undoubtedly become somewhat worn through use. I pointed out to Charlie that I had backtracked on the history of the car and discovered it already had oversized pistons in it. A previous owner had demanded that it run quieter. "When you leave here you're gonna have a nice tight engine, son" was Charlie's only response.

The engine gradually resumed its original shape. And then came the problem of getting it back into the car. Charlie devoted a whole day to squeezing the engine back in—pulling, pushing, turning, wiggling and kicking at it in the process. Every now and then his pressure valve let go: "A lot of other people made automobiles that stood up, didn't they? Him and his crazy ideas." Later, in a muffled singsong from beneath the car: "La misère. La misère de Bugatti" (imparting to the name the full flavor of its proper pronunciation—Boo-ghatee). Finally he succeeded, crawled out from under the car and kicked it viciously. "Any man ever made a crazy automobile, this is it! Mr. Bugatti, I hate you!"

Charlie started the car. It ran, in a somewhat ragged fashion. Charlie fiddled around, and the engine sounded smoother. His assistant suggested that maybe now the fenders and hood could go back on. "No sir," snapped Charlie, "not until the engine is running perfectly."

The car was run in the shop periodically for several days, and then the old man took it out and drove it around the block. Hood and fenders went back on. After that the Bugatti refused to run at all. Charlie stared at the car in disbelief. "Heartbreaking automobile," he said. He fiddled some more. "It's some damn little thing about this big," he said, holding up two fingers about two inches apart.

I called a Bugatti expert in Connecticut to ask if he would take a look. He couldn't but said he would send someone. The next day a little man arrived with a little Bugatti emblem in the lapel of his coat, which somehow infuriated me. The little man removed a sparkplug and took a compression check. There was a slight whistling sound but no compression. The same was true in other cylinders. "The valves are all bent," the little man said. Then he went home.

Charlie couldn't believe it. Summer came and went and he still couldn't believe it. Apparently there are things about a Bugatti that elude a good Rolls-Royce man. But in the fall he went at it again, took the engine out, dismantled it, straightened the valves and reassembled the car once more. In the latter operation he followed a suggestion made by the Connecticut consultant to make assembly easier. He glued the piston rings to the cylinders to make inserting them easier. Then he poured solvent through the sparkplug holes to dissolve the cement and release the rings, draining the resulting gunk out of the bottom of the engine. Then came the day for the Great Road Test.

I had a business date at a research lab in New Jersey, and Charlie agreed that a run out there would be a good first trip. Early the next morning I arrived at the shop. The car was poised and ready to go, all warmed up and with a blanket over the classic, horseshoe-shaped radiator. Charlie was ready to go, too. No coveralls for a classy test like this. Instead a tweed suit and golf cap. We made the 35-mile trip without incident, and I waved goodby to Charlie as he headed back to the city. By midafternoon, unable to bear the suspense any longer, I called the shop.

"How are things?"