Bugatti Baby 2.0

By Wayne Batty

When you are Ettore Bugatti and you need a birthday present for your son who is about to be four years old, you don’t pop off to the department store for some die-cast trinket. No sir, you get your factory to build a half-scale version of your phenomenally successful Type 35 motor car instead.

No doubt birthday boy Roland was pleased. Watching him whizz around his father’s office in Molsheim must have made an impression on Bugatti’s customers too as, pretty soon, the Bugatti ‘Baby’ was put into production alongside its big brother.

That was 1927. Fast forward 90-odd years and meet the Bugatti Baby II, a three-quarter scale version of the iconic Type 35, developed by The Little Car Company and Bugatti using a full 3D scan of an original 1924 French Grand Prix car.

As an official Bugatti product, the Baby II is built to exacting standards using the finest materials and expert craftsmanship – the hand-formed aluminium bodywork of the Pur Sang model is a 200-hour job alone. As such, Baby II wears its silver Bugatti Macaron with pride.

Motive power comes from either a 4kW or 10kW electric motor fed by a 2.8kWh battery pack. Prices start from €36,000 for the ‘Base’ model, while a standard Pur Sang will set you back €62,500. Production is limited to 500 units.
If you’d like something even more special, you’d need to shell out considerably more. Buy a Bugatti Mistral Roadster for £4,2million, throw in another €80k and you get the Baby II Carbon Edition.

Available as an option to Mistral owners only, the Carbon Edition is inspired by the newest Bugatti motor car – the last ever model to sport the fabled W16 engine – and is detailed to match it inside and out. That means, bespoke paintwork, numerous carbon details, horizontal LED units within the headlight housings and a cleaner aesthetic, courtesy of the deletion of the spare wheel and its associated bracket and straps. As a final, Mistral-matching touch, customers can add a hand-painted French flag to the side of their Baby II. It’s all very Bugatti; Ettore would be proud.