Bonhams has confirmed that a bidder paid €260,500 for the remains of a Bugatti that was pulled from the depths of Switzerland’s Lake Maggiore after 73 years.
The price for the 1925 Bugatti Type 22 was even more astonishing given that it had a reserve price of between €70,000 and €90,000.
The final high bidders were divided in their plans for the vehicle, with the European winner planning to display the car in its present condition.
A rare Bugatti that has spent 73 years at the bottom of a Swiss lake is expected to fetch more than €90,000 at auction, the same as a brand new luxury motor.
The 1925 open-top Type 22 is known as the Bugatti Brescia, after the Italian track where the model took the top four places at a race in 1921.
It is now believed that it belonged to Max Schmuklerski, a Swiss-Polish architect who left it in store in a builder’s yard.
Original Bugatti’s are still to be found.
Last Sunday a diving team lifted the wreckage of a Bugatti Brescia from the depths of Lago Maggiore near Ascona in Switzerland.
For seventy years it had slumbered at a depth of more than fifty metres. Isn’t it amazing how these things survive?
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