The Barn Bugatti Sells At Auction

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Feb 7th 2009 at 8:02PM

From the barn to the auction block, a rare Bugatti Atalante 57S that had been tucked away in a barn for half a century had its moment in the sun this weekend. The car was auctioned off in Paris as part of the Bonhams Retromobile sale. The estimated value had been listed as high as £6 million (about $8.8 million) and the official estimate was between 2.75 million euros and 4 million euros. Bloomberg reports that it sold for 3.5 million euros ($4.53 million). The two-seat 1937 Bugatti Atalante 57S coupe was one of 17 vehicles of its type and had just 26,284 miles odometer. This number was far less than the $7.92 million that, as my colleague Jared Paul Stern reported, another 1937 Bugatti Type 57SC Atalante coupe sold for last summer. That car, however, was in much better shape, the new owner of the barn Bugatti is facing a restoration bill in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Tags: atalante, auction, bonhams, bugatti, cars, rare car, RareCar