Bugatti
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50 free Bugatti trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Few car makers have a story like Bugatti's. It begins with an artist's son who built cars the way other people made sculpture, runs through a golden age of racing between the wars, nearly ends in tragedy and bankruptcy, and comes back decades later with some of the fastest cars ever sold. These Bugatti fun facts are written as quiz questions, so you can test yourself as you go. They cover the founding family, the Type 35 and its racing record, the enormous Royale, the Atlantic coupé, the short-lived EB 110 era, and the modern Veyron, Chiron and Tourbillon, along with the drivers, designers and odd side projects that fill out the legend. The quiz suits car enthusiasts and curious newcomers alike. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess leaves you with a story worth repeating.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A drivable full-size Bugatti Chiron replica was built from over a million pieces of which toy?
Lego
Lego Technic pieces made up the working 2018 replica, with 2,304 toy motors as its engine. It produced about 5 horsepower, against roughly 1,500 for the real car.
Q 02Which animal tops the Bugatti Royale's radiator, cast from a sculpture by Ettore Bugatti's brother?
An elephant
An elephant tops the Royale's radiator, cast from a work by Ettore's brother, who had died in 1916. He was renowned for his bronzes of wild animals.
Q 03Which car group revived Bugatti and made the 1,001-horsepower Veyron its first production model?
Volkswagen
Volkswagen set up Bugatti Automobiles in December 1998 and brought the marque home to Molsheim. The Veyron was due in 2003 but took until 2005 to reach production.
Q 04Which Formula One driver bought a yellow Bugatti EB 110 in 1994, then crashed it into a truck?
Michael Schumacher
Michael Schumacher crashed the yellow EB 110 into a truck and blamed inadequate brakes. He had the car repaired anyway and kept it until 2003.
Q 05Ettore Bugatti founded his car company in 1909 at Molsheim, a town that then belonged to which country?
Germany
Germany had held Alsace since 1871, and the region returned to France only in 1919. So the famous French marque was founded by an Italian on what was then foreign soil.
Q 06With the Bugatti Royale unsold in the Depression, its spare 12.7-litre engines went on to power what?
Railcars
Railcars for the French national railway took the unused engines, two or four apiece. They turned the Royale project from an economic failure into a commercial success.
Q 07Which British TV show named the Bugatti Veyron its Car of the Decade after driving one at 253 mph?
Top Gear
Top Gear named the Veyron its Car of the Decade for the 2000s. Presenter James May took one to 253 mph and reported that at that speed the engine swallows 45,000 litres of air a minute.
Q 08Which fashion designer bought a rare Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic in 1988 and had it restored in black?
Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren bought his Atlantic in 1988 and had it restored to 1938 condition, though painted black at his request. Three of the four cars built are known to survive.
Q 09The Bugatti Tourbillon, the V16 hybrid that succeeded the Chiron, is named after a part found in what?
Mechanical watches
Mechanical watches use a tourbillon to improve their accuracy. The car's dials follow the theme: built like a watch movement and made in titanium by a Swiss watchmaker.
Q 10The Bugatti Veyron honours Pierre Veyron, a company test driver who co-won which endurance race in 1939?
24 Hours of Le Mans
The 24 Hours of Le Mans fell to Veyron and Jean-Pierre Wimille in a Type 57. It was Bugatti's last great racing win, achieved with just one car and meagre resources.
Q 11A Bugatti Type 35 won the very first running of which glamorous street race in 1929?
Monaco Grand Prix
The Monaco Grand Prix began with a Bugatti win for William Grover-Williams. In World War II he became a British secret agent, running a resistance network near Paris.
Q 12Ettore Bugatti's younger brother, a sculptor famed for bronze animals, bore the name of which Dutch painter?
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Bugatti spent long hours at the Antwerp Zoo studying exotic animals for his bronzes. His work even featured in the art competition at the 1912 Olympics.
Q 13Ettore Bugatti's father Carlo was a celebrated Art Nouveau designer, best known for creating what?
Furniture
Q 21Bugatti's Type 35 won which Sicilian road race five years running, from 1925 to 1929?
Targa Florio
The Targa Florio went to Bugatti every year from 1925 through 1929. At its height the Type 35 was averaging 14 race wins a week.
Q 22The Bugatti Type 52 'Baby', a half-scale Type 35 made for children from 1927, was driven by what?
An electric motor
An electric motor drove the Baby, first built for Ettore Bugatti's four-year-old son Roland. About 500 were made, and children of Europe's elite raced them in earnest.
Q 23A 1925 Bugatti recovered in 2009 had spent about 75 years at the bottom of which Alpine lake?
Maggiore
Furniture made Carlo Bugatti's name, and his work triumphed at the Turin decorative art exhibition of 1902. He also designed jewellery, and his own father was an architect and sculptor.
Q 14In which Italian city was Ettore Bugatti born, later building his first vehicle there as a teenager?
Milan
Milan was home to the artistic Bugatti family and to Prinetti & Stucchi, the tricycle maker where the teenage Ettore built his Type 1 in 1898.
Q 15What shape is the signature radiator grille that carries the oval Macaron badge on a Bugatti Chiron?
A horseshoe
A horseshoe grille is Bugatti's signature, and the enamel Macaron badge mounted on it dates back to the Type 13 of 1909.
Q 16The enamel Macaron badge on a Bugatti's nose spells the name in white on an oval of which colour?
Red
Red forms the background, an idea credited to Ettore Bugatti himself. His initials EB sit above the name, and 60 small dots run around the white border.
Q 17Bugatti's Grand Prix cars of the 1920s raced in which colour, the national racing colour of France?
Blue
Blue was assigned to France when national racing colours were first handed out in 1900. Yellow went to Belgium that year.
Q 18The Bugatti Veyron's engine arranges sixteen cylinders in four banks, a layout named after which letter?
W
W engines like this one are effectively two narrow-angle eight-cylinder units mated at 90 degrees on one crankshaft. The 8.0-litre Veyron unit adds four turbochargers.
Q 19Which tyre maker built the special run-flat tyres designed to survive the Bugatti Veyron's 253 mph top speed?
Michelin
Michelin made the run-flat tyres specifically for the Veyron's top speed. A set cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the tyres had to be fitted to the wheels in France.
Q 20Which feature, now common on road cars, did the Bugatti Type 35 racer famously introduce in 1924?
Alloy wheels
Alloy wheels were a novelty when the Type 35 appeared, and it is remembered as the first car to use cast ones. It went on to win over 1,000 races.
Maggiore, on the Swiss-Italian border, gave up the rusted Bugatti in July 2009. A California museum then paid about $350,000 for it at a Paris auction.
Q 24Ettore Bugatti reputedly dismissed which British rival's heavy racing cars as the world's fastest lorries?
Bentley
Bentley focused on durability, the opposite of Ettore Bugatti's obsession with lightness. His own engine blocks were hand-scraped so flat that they needed no gaskets.
Q 25The Bugatti Atlantic's raised dorsal seam began on a prototype whose magnesium-alloy panels could not be what?
Welded
Welded joints were ruled out by the fire risk, so engineers riveted the panels together on the outside. Production Atlantics used plain aluminium but kept the seam for style.
Q 26Jean Bugatti renamed the Type 57 Atlantic in tribute to his friend Jean Mermoz, who was famous as what?
A pioneering aviator
A pioneering aviator, Mermoz was lost when his plane came down in the Atlantic in December 1936. The car had been called the Coupé Aero until then.
Q 27Jean Bugatti, heir to the company, died in 1939 when his Type 57 test car swerved to avoid what?
A cyclist
A cyclist was on the road near the factory, and the 30-year-old crashed into a tree avoiding him. Jean had designed the Atlantic, and the company's fortunes declined after his death.
Q 28Which nickname stuck to Bugatti's boxy streamlined racing cars, first the 1923 Type 32 and later the Type 57G?
Tank
Tank suited the Type 32, whose slab-sided body resembled the battle tanks of its day. The later 57G wore the name with far more success, winning the 1936 French Grand Prix.
Q 29Which country's king was promised a Bugatti Royale by Ettore Bugatti in 1928 but was deposed before delivery?
Spain
Spain's King Alfonso XIII lost his throne in April 1931 without ever taking delivery. The first Royale to find a paying customer was not handed over until 1932.
Q 30The Bugatti EB 110 supercar of the 1990s takes the number in its name from 110 years since what?
Its founder's birth
Its founder's birth in September 1881 gave the EB 110 its name: Ettore Bugatti's initials plus his 110th birthday. Just 139 were built before the company failed in 1995.