Bugatti Type 40 1926

According to RM Sotheby’s, Jean Bugatti took the first production Type 40 for his personal use. Another documented story concerns a car preserved by the Museu do Caramulo: its owner, Frederico Loiseau, reportedly drove from Paris to Côte d’Ivoire across the Sahara and then returned, covering about 14,500 kilometres in 33 days. The journey helped reinforce the Type 40’s reputation for durability, but it relates to one individual car rather than to every example built.

Bugatti Type 40 production is generally dated from 1926 to 1930 or 1931, depending on the counting method used. The available sources do not give an identical total: the Museu do Caramulo records 780 cars built at Molsheim between May 1926 and March 1931, while the Bugatti Trust and Bugatti Club Denmark give approximately 830 cars for the Type 40 family, including around forty Type 40As. The most cautious description is therefore roughly 800 cars. These figures combine the model and, in some sources, the Type 40A variant; they do not make it possible to identify with certainty how many standard 1926 cars were built.

Modern reference sources generally present the Type 40 as a more affordable road-going Bugatti than the company’s Grand Prix cars. RM Sotheby’s emphasizes the four-cylinder engine’s reliability, along with the car’s light weight, lively responses, and four-wheel drum brakes. The Museu do Caramulo likewise describes it as robust and highly desirable in its period. These assessments come primarily from museum, heritage, and collector-car sources rather than from a complete review of automotive magazines published in 1926. The safest conclusion is that the Type 40 enjoyed a positive reputation as a usable sporting touring car, without assigning an exact ranking or quotation that cannot be independently verified.