Affluent Page Magazine Presents Bugatti Type 51 Expected to Fetch for €1,000,000 at Bonhams Upcoming Auction

“If Bugatti-worship were a religion, then the atheist Fitzroy Somerset, the 5th Lord Raglan, would have been its pope,” writes Andrew Roth in Lord Raglan’s obituary in The Guardian.

Bonhams’ has announced the sale of the 1933 Bugatti Type 51 Grand Prix, previously owned by the late Fitzroy John Somerset, the 5th Baron Raglan: patron and former Chairman of the Bugatti Owners’ Club and Trustee of the Bugatti Trust. The vintage automobile will auction at the Bohnams’ Paris Sale of Motor Cars, on February 2011. The Grand Palais on the Champs-Elysées, noted as one of the most impressive venues Paris’ has to offer, will house the awaited car event.

During the Crimean war, the 1st Baron, Lord Raglan’s great grandfather, was the General in command of British troops and has been ceaselessly linked to the unfortunate Charge of the Light Brigade, even though he is forever celebrated for his love of collectors’ motor cars’ especially Bugatti’s. . He once said, “my passion for Bugatti’s started when I was 18 and I have raced around the world.” Lord Raglan acquired the Bugatti Type 51 in 1979, and worked on its restoration over the extent of two years and a half, subsequently racing it for the next twenty years.

Following the steps of Ettore Bugatti and Earl Howe, in 1998, Lord Raglan was elected as only the third Patron of the Bugatti Owners’ Club in all of its eighty years of history, upon his retirement from an exceptionally successful period as the club’s Chairman.

The well-known auction house has offered a Bugatti owned by former Patron of the Bugatti’s Owner’s Club at one of their previous Parisian venues. A 1937 Bugatti Type 57S, originally owned by Earl Howe, sold for a significant €3.4 million in 2009.

James Knight, Group Head of Bonhams Motoring Department, says, “We feel privileged to have been appointed to offer these magnificent Bugatti’s with such well-known provenance. Lord Raglan will be forever linked to the Bugatti marque and his cars have only come to market following his death. They will undoubtedly attract a great deal of interest from collectors world-wide.”

The Bugatti Type 51 is expected to sell for an estimated €1,000,000 – 1,400,000.

~Affluent Page