The Bugatti Type 252 is a one-off sports car developed by

Bugatti Automobiles Ettore Bugatti was a German then French manufacturer of high-performance automobiles. The company was founded in 1909 in the then-German city of Molsheim, Alsace, by the Italian-born industrial designer Ettore Bugatti. The cars w ...

between 1957 and 1962. However the Bugatti Type 252 never went beyond the prototype stage. The car now resides in the Cité de l'Automobile museum in Mulhouse, France.

History

Developed between 1957 and 1962, the Bugatti Type 252 was the last car proposed by the historic Bugatti brand before it was sold to

Hispano-Suiza Hispano-Suiza () is a Spanish automotive–engineering company. It was founded in 1904 by Marc Birkigt and Damian Mateu as an automobile manufacturer and eventually had several factories in Spain and France that produced luxury cars, aircraft en ...

in 1963. The Bugatti Type 252 is the result of a mid-size sports car study conducted by Roland Bugatti and was designed by Giovanni Michelotti. It was reportedly pitched to multiple different investors but never was funded and remained a one-off. It is powered by a 1.5 L

inline 4 A straight-four engine (also called an inline-four) is a four-cylinder piston engine where cylinders are arranged in a line along a common crankshaft. The vast majority of automotive four-cylinder engines use a straight-four layout (with the e ...

engine with twin overhead camshafts and uses MacPherson strut suspension in the front and rear. During development, the car suffered numerous engine problems, and on test drives, driver Pierre Macoin would frequently end up broken down on the side of the road. To avoid any unwanted publicity, Bugatti decided that they would fit the prototype engine under the hood of a Bugatti Type 73 saloon. Later though, both the engine and chassis of the Type 252 were redesigned. Work on the suspension began in August 1959 and was completed in 1962, but the project was abandoned soon after.

References

252 Year 252 ( CCLII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Trebonianus and Volusianus (or, less frequently, year 1005 ''Ab urbe ...