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if there was a prototype operation for what Enzo Ferrari envisioned it had to be what the legendary iori Bugatti built in mshim this part artist part engineer part entrepreneur part sculptor had created an automotive fum in a tiny
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village in alace Lorraine France the Bugatti estate included a small elegant Inn for the entertainment of customers a stable of thoroughbred horses and the factory itself which was a series of low buildings set among landscaped Gardens
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with a trout stream Meandering through the factory Machinery Bugatti was from Milan born into a family of artists the boss as he was known was generally to be found conducting business dressed in riding breaches boots and a yellow coat
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his automobiles were and remain a stunning combination of industrial Aesthetics and the jeweler's art as if fabra had somehow been able to motorize an ACH they were simple flawlessly fabricated and reliable Bugatti was just one of a bevy of colorful eccentrics
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dissolute Nobles Playboys dreaming commoners and hard eyed ego Maniacs who populated the world of European Motorsports in the 1930s he certainly stood Above the Rest in terms of Lifestyle a feudal Barony had been created around the spidery machines that
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he manufactured in limited quantities and sold only to those he personally deemed worthy by contrast Enzo for ferari at the time was still a drab simple journeyman laboring in a small Garage in an Italian Backwater but the example that Bugatti was setting for
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Ferrari did not Escape him Bugatti was a prototype for Success he was manufacturing cars for the very wealthy and Fielding his own team of professional race car drivers mobs of people were flocking to mosheim to have their Bugattis anointed by the master
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himself surely if Bugatti could succeed at this a similar concept could be developed by Enzo Ferrari that was an excerpt not from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today but a book that I read originally back on episode
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220 it's called Enzo Ferrari the man and the Machine and it was written by Brock Yates but that was the exert that originally got me interested in reading a biography of Bugatti up until last week I had failed to find one there is a
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Founders listener by the name of Cameron priest who's probably sent me dozens I don't even know maybe 50 excellent hard toine biography recommendations over the years and he was the one that made me aware of the book that I'm actually
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holding in my hand which is called the Bugatti story and it was written by Bugatti's daughter lab Bugatti and this is the perfect book for Founders podcast it was originally published very hard to find it's originally published in 1967 the copy that I'm holding in my
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hand was actually somebody's Easter gift in 1972 you can still see the note and I can tell you right up front this is a book that I'm going to wind up reading again I'm going to make more episodes on the future I absolutely loved I spent
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the last 8 Days going over the book I could have spent another week reading and just rereading certain parts of this book it is perfect I feel like I've stumbled upon some kind of like hidden treasure okay so I want to start with the forward where his daughter is
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talking about like why she decided to write the book this book was written in response to the long-felt desire of the Bugatti family to have a full and objective account of the life and work of itori Bugatti and one of the things I
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like most about the book is the fact that towards the end of his life Bugatti was uh very sick a few months before he died he started try to write his autobiography it was never published but his daughter had a copy and so there's
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large chunks of his autobiography in this book so it's like Bugatti talk speaking directly to you and I almost 80 years after he died so I want to start in the preface of this book it was actually written by an engineer who worked with uh Bugatti so an idea that
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un and I have talked about over and over again there's always a blueprint all of the founders that were studying they were inspired by Founders or scientists or inventors or explorers that came for them obviously from the excert of Enzo
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Ferrari's biography we see that in large part the blueprint for Ferrari was Bugatti and so these observations about Bugatti the man made by the engineer that worked with him you can clearly see why somebody like Enzo Ferrari would
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want to pattern much of his career after Bugatti and so he says car manufacturers at this time looked upon their products as parts of themselves Bugatti was one of the last car manufacturers to keep the flag of the artistically built car
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flying high when the mass-produced car invaded the scene Bugatti maintained that quality production depended upon a small number of skilled workers and a small output his character was too strong to change to new methods so what they're talking about here is this is
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the reason this came to mind is because Enzo Ferrari uh he has this famous exchange with Henry Ford II so that is Henry Ford's grandson who was running Ford Motor Company in like the 1950s when this is happening and Ford Motor Company had attempted to buy Ferrari and
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Henry Ford II and so Ferrari get into this argument and Ferrari says that you make ugly little cars in an ugly Factory Ferrari like Bugatti before him were still handbuilding his cars in fact in that book that the Ford vers Ferrari
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movie that came out a few years ago it's actually based on this book called go like hell which I also did a podcast on there's this great line that talked about how the contrast between the cars that the Ford uh Factory was producing
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and then these like hand built cars that Ferrari was making at the time and so it says nothing like a Ferrari ever graced American roads they were cars built by Italian Artisans every detail down to the steering wheel handcrafted using some of the same methods used to make
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Roman suits of armor and the Royal carriages of the ancient Kingdom and so this idea of cutting against the bias to use the term that Balenciaga used uh last week you have the like the trends within your industry that everybody else
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is adopting and copying Bugatti was like Balenciaga Bugatti was like Ferrari he would constantly cut against the bias so it says he was he's too strong to change to new methods as other car manufacturers resigned themselves to doing so they're talking about changing
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from these this like an artisan uh handmade Factory to mass production Bugatti had no interest in that at all and he taught all of his employees to adopt this mindset as well by his training Bugatti raised his workmen to the level of artisan Artisans and
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Craftsmen these two words evoke his own personality he was an artist and a Craftsman he always insisted that his engineers and technicians should never ignore the promptings of their intuition I was a young engineer at the time and I
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fell under the spell of his charm and his singleness of purpose to the end of his days he remained a figure of another age an age in which the conveyor belt had not yet eliminated craftsmanship and when individual imagination could have free reign and
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then we get to the first excerpt from his unpublished autobiography where he says in order to explain the strange development of my career I must first describe my environment during my childhood and what my life was like as a
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youth and so the influence of his father Carlo is very fascinating to me it's going to go on for several pages but I I want to give you what I think are the most important parts so he he comes from a a a family full of artists they were
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pretty well off his grandfather was a famous architect and a sculptor his dad was an acclaimed jewelry and Furniture designer and he also painted and and sculpted as well art was extremely important in their family and we can see this because they named uh Bugatti's
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younger brother ramb Brandt and he's going to be a famous artist in his own right but there was just one line that jumped out on me when I was reading through this about his early childhood and that his dad would would tell him that art could not be learned that if
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you were going to be an artist it would be an innate skill it would be something that came completely natural to you and if you didn't have it you were wasting your time the interesting thing to me behind that statement is the fact that
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that then sent Bugatti on this search for what am I naturally inclined and talented at doing and Bugatti like Henry Ford just stumbled upon the fact that they had a gifted mind for mechanics and Engineering without any kind of training
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at all and discovering this also came from advice that he got from his father so his father told both of his sons that you should work with your hands and you can do whatever you want you just cannot be mediocre and so when he's really
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young he's like 15 or 16 years old at the time he winds up trying out this thing called a motor tricycle so it's just what it sounds it's a tricycle with a motor on it and this is the first time he realizes he has some kind of innate
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Talent here in a short while by just looking at the machine I had grasped all the intricacies of its mechanism my father attached great importance to his two sons being able to work with their hands and so Bugatti wrote that even in establishments of higher education
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manual work would be of great value to those who are choosing a career it is a relaxation and at the same time it exercises your muscles and your brain and so a young like high school age Bugatti we're talking like late 1890s is
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where we are in the story right he discovers okay wait he's at the right place the right time he's the right person with the right set of skills he says it was a time when people were Awakening to the possibilities of self-propelled road vehicles and I was
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immediately fascinated by these new machines none of the people who were working on these road vehicles at the time was in fact motivated by thoughts of commercial gain listen to the language that he uses to describe the work that he was doing at this time it
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was an aspiration to Greater freedom to an emancipation from the ties which bound man to the Earth and it's at this point where he realizes oh this is going to be my art form says he threw himself into this entirely new kind of art where
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so much was still to be invented for Bugatti the main attraction of was having something to create to model to perfect and the joy of seeing the machine come into being as a work of sculpture did in the hands of his father or his brother this Revelation changed
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the whole course of his life and there's a factory producing highquality motor tricycles right in Milan this is where Milan is where Bugatti and his family are living at this point and so at 17 years old he becomes an apprentice in this Factory
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that's producing these motor tricycles and so he starts with this initial passion this passion of mechanics this passion of engineering and then it's going to join with another lifelong passion that he has and that is for racing initially it is for motor
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tricycle racing then it's obviously going to be for car racing so by the time before he's even 18 He makes his own model of a motor tricycle then he takes it from Milan all the way to this race in France and so before I get to why
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racing was so important to him even when he was 17 it's important to him till he dies I got to tell you more about his personality this guy's got like Kanye West levels of self-confidence and so before he enters this race he's on record saying even
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before the start I was sure that I'd win and to put in the context why that's so astounding is this next sentence this Tri car was the first that he had made I want to get to this part why racing was so important though it was it was
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fascinating because the way that Bugatti thought about racing and uh I talked about this you know I did like a 13 part series years ago on all of these like early American Automobile Company Founders it was still true in the late 1800s just like it was true in the 1950s
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and 1960s in Europe racing is the best distribution Channel if you're a a car manufacturer you win a race you have a line of customers out the door that want to buy that car but aside from the benefit of the business Bugatti liked it
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because it was able racing was the only true objective way to prove to himself how good his designs were and so this is a little bit about how he looked at it here his passion for racing was at once aroused and this was a passion that he
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was never to lose it was not so much for the race itself it was because it was a natural compliment of his passion for mechanics racing constituted the testing bench without which all mechanical inventions remain abstractions it alone
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could decide all problems and was the indispensable true test and so the fact that this passion and Obsession right grabbed him from the very beginning refused to let him go he didn't want it to want it to let him go either is one of the things I most admire about
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Bugatti and why I said earlier this is a book that I plan on reading and rereading many times in the future and hopefully making many more episodes about and it's because of how he describes this he's you know 17 18 years old at a time
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essentially he just wants to spend as much time as possible learning everything he can about his obsession uh meanwhile I was studying the different types of engines examining their qualities and discussing their defects I determined to build a car of my own I
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had realized by then that I was completely taken by mechanics in which I could clearly see so many imperfections my ideas gave me no rest and so this is like the first hint but the book talks about it later on that you know he kept very regular hours
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there's really no separation between him his life and his work I mean we even talk about the the way he set up his house and his family are is literally on the grounds of his Factory that is like the physical manifestation of for what
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is happening in his mind uh he would see the perfect car in his imagination but he lacked the material to build it no one was prepared to invest in his capabilities as a car builder and so he has to get these ideas out of his head this is now something that he talks
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about uh he'll do he'll work this way for the rest of his career and he would recommend other people doing it as well he' put everything down on paper uh he began to put all of his ideas down on paper in drawings and in designs all the
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ideas that his head was full of he spent whole days designing his car in every detail he talked about it with such enthusiasm that it seemed to be speeding along at 40 m an hour even then I sometimes feared that it might turn his mind so this idea where he sees the
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perfect car that he wants to build in his mind right it comes from his imagination first he has to get it out so his version of a prototype is like drawing it out on paper and then he uses this paper to go and try to raise financing so this is very similar I
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talked about this before there is this legendary meeting that takes place between Steve Jobs when he was like in his 20s and Edwin L the founder of Polaroid when he was like in his 70s this is from the book instant the story
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of Polaroid I've done multiple times and it talks about the conversation that a young Steve Jobs and an older Edmund land are having it says the two inventors describe to each other a singular experience each had imagined a new a perfect new product whole already
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manufactured and sitting before him and then spend years prodding Executives engineers and factories to create it with as few compromises as possible that is exactly what happened with Bugatti So eventually he finds two very wealthy
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Brothers in fact he they invite them out they invite Bugatti to their huge estate and this is the first time another passion Bugatti is like passion personified another passion of his as you could probably guess the fact that he conducted business dressed as he was
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riding horses was horse riding and it's actually at this estate from these two brothers that are going to wind up uh funding the initial prototype uh that Bugatti is about to build when I think he's like 18 yeah I'm pretty sure he's
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18 here he learns to love horses and horse riding on a visit from their estate but these two brothers meet him and they're like oh this guy's a genius uh they recognize that once a hidden Brilliance in him and we're prepared to go into partnership with him to enable
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him to build his car and then we get the first indication of something that he does for the rest of his life he's a micromanager he's involved in every single step of the process he supervises everything uh in many cases he can do
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every single there's a there's a line uh at the very end of the book in the appendix uh let me get to it real quick because I I might not bring it up later and it reminded me of James Cameron and Christopher Nolan who I've just spent a
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bunch of time uh studying and in the minds of and this is about Bugatti says he can do any job in the factory as well as are better than the most skilled meic I'm not kidding this is crazy this book is what what is it 60 years old no
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longer than that 70 something years old however old the book is that line there's a line just like that in the James Cameron biography there's a line just like that in the Christopher Nolan biography it is spooky how you and I are
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keep studying the same personality in different bodies alive at different times working in different Industries it's so crazy to me so let me get to this point he would let no one but himself put the car through its Paces it was his from start to finish he had been
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responsible for or had supervised the whole construction he has 19 from the drawing board to the final assembly so then he goes this goes back to this like Kanye West level of of of confidence that is very beneficial he goes and enters this into the very first
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International Motor Show which was being organized in Milan this is the year 1901 and so it's a car show based on like obviously how the cars look but actually how it performs too so then he he takes it like around this track and of course
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he drives it himself and yet again we see more evidence that he was right like he had stumbled upon this innate talent because he wins it he won first place at the first ever International Motor Show and so this idea that you have this
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gifted person he's a perfectionist by Nature he wants to control everything he's completely obsessed he's keeping irregular hours he's giving everything to this like new craft by the time he's 19 so he wins the the international motor show right then there's this car
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manufacturing firm in Germany it's called ddri they wind up offering Bugatti a contract to manufacture his car for them and he's going to get paid a royalty fee so he this is the first time he moves from Italy to Germany and so because his daughter had access to
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his unfinished autobiography we see how he writes about how he felt about his very first contract I mean he had a bunch of success up until this point but this is like the the turning point in his life and so he talk he says I
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received 25 or 30,000 Franks when I handed over my designs I was happy to have money to spend on which I had earned myself I drew satisfaction from being able to support myself without anyone's help and I found satisfaction in receiving a sum of money for a
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completed job of work which had given me pleasure to think about and to do which had been fun to do he has work that feels like play and we see again the sustained level of confidence he's 19 he's like listen I want to do something
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new I want to do something that no one else has done before and this is the first time he mentions patents but I think I think he winds up dying with like 900 patents or some it's a crazy number so he says my patents result from my own work and I'm happy when I can
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improve on something already existing and arrive at a point which others have not yet reached at one point I had been granted more patents in Germany than anyone else and then he talks about the importance because remember he comes
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from a family of artist he had studied intently Leonardo da Vinci and he realizes that the way Da Vinci approached his work there's ideas in the way Da Vinci approached his work that Bugatti can use in his own and the fact that he knew this at 19 is incredible
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The Importance of Being influenced by you know the great work and the great people that did that work that came before him and so one thing you learn is like oh if you can you can develop your like powers of observation that is like
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a meta skill that can be used for anything so he says powers of observation are indispensable in order to produce anything Leonardo da Vinci had wonderful powers of observation he could reproduce with exactitude something which today would take a
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magnifying glass to do he could catch movement as the camera does now and at the same time he gave the illusion of life to his sketches something that photography is unable to do it is by this observation that one can penetrate
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into the nature of things if a man like Leonardo became a military engineer he would have been an expert at it his advice on any subject would be invaluable and his ideas on the matter would be highly original an artist of this class misses nothing the smallest
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detail invisible to Ordinary People is enough to enable him to fix his subject this habit of observation leads to the heart of the matter in all branches of human activity faster progress this is wild faster progress would be made in
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all Fields if conceit did not cause us to forget or disdain the work done by others before us there is a tendency to believe that nothing worthy of note has been done in the past and this has an unfortunate bearing on our judgment thus
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the present Trend toward mediocrity the improvements I have made to Mechanical constructions have resulted from such habits of observation and so he talks about that starts in your mind first I often think that one should not put pencil to paper before
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having visualized what one wants to do from all angles over the years and after much experience in drawing quite novel and complicated things and pocketbooks I have come to work by a series of mental images and the drawing board enables me
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to give effect to those images a technician who cannot put down his ideas on paper is at a great disadvantage to sum this up the powers of observation and a great facility with the pencil are the two attributes that matter the most and so before he sets up Bugatti as like
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his own independent company he is going to design cars for other car manufacturers and then he gets paid per car manufactured on like a royalty basis and so he does this two or three times but the way he sets this up it really tells you like how important
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Independence Independence like maintaining his Independence was before I get there though this is what finding your life's work sounds like I was hypnotized drawn more and more to the mechanics of Motors these exciting problems had me completely under their
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Sway and so began for me the hard uphill task the thankless labor of constru dting and destroying and beginning again without a break or rest and for days months years even until success finally rewarded all my efforts and so he has a little team
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there's like three people in the the workshop putting together the car three people in like the design shop putting it together they don't have enough money to manufacture it themselves so he does another deal with this company called
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dutes This is dutes gas engine uh it's also in Germany so they're going to manufacture the car but they ALS also make Bugatti the manager of the production Department in his contract though he makes sure that he's always
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retaining his independence and so this is what he says it was the first time that had agreed to take an appointment with a firm meaning an actual day job whilst being compensated by the royalties I received on the production of my car under their license I had
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retained this is the important part I had retained the right to work independently on any other project in which I might be interested he did not want to be relegated to the service ude of employee he said so much himself he' felt fettered by his appointment in the
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service of others and so that Clause was the most important clause in the entire contract because what he's doing is in his spare time he is going to build the very first Bugatti so Bugatti decided to build it himself in his spare time he
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worked patiently for many months gradually assembling it in the cellar of the house where he was living when it was complete he gave it a name which would later become renowned percent it means Thoroughbred animal in French and so this is the beginning of the business
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this is the beginning of him building his own world within the world this is the birth of Mame where the Bugatti Factory is still to this day so he goes to a banker with his plans they give him the funding to start his business and
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this is his daughter describing this point in their life at Christmas we all moved into the new house where we were to live for the next 30 Years so Bugatti is around 30 years old at the time and a description of the early days of his company really tells
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you a lot about what was important to him says his cars were handbuilt each in expression of the Creator's personality he retained his independent Outlook his freedom to invent and his urge for Perfection down to the smallest details
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he took little notice of Trends among rival car manufacturers that reminded me of uh last week what Balenciaga was like this with other fashion designers and Bugatti paid no more attention to the presumed tastes of the public that sounds like Steve Jobs essentially what
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they're saying there is he relied on his own taste he built the product that he wanted to use and you're going to see another similarity with uh Balenciaga I think last week it said like Dior Christian Dior made dresses for the rich
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and Balenciaga made dresses for the wealthy right from the very beginning Bugatti with his actions is essentially saying hey uh I make expensive I only want to make high quality products and I'm aiming for the top and he did this from day one Bugatti made no
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attempt to compete with the low price popular models already on the market the price of the Bugatti was higher than any other car of equal horsepower the reason is that this new production stands in a class by itself and so they start out
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making like five 10 cars a year this is not a large production within two years his business is already fantastically successful and this is going to remind us of one of my favorite ideas that David ogy noticed about people that get
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to the top of their profession and he summarized it with the good ones no more the public began to take notice of of this new Constructor of cars that's obviously Bugatti whose business was only 2 years old and that he knew more about the subject than the big firms
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whose Fame had spread around the world and so before I move on I just want to pause here like remember a few pages back where he's like I felt hypnotized I was drawn to this I'm under the sway you fast forward two years later and he
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knows more about it than anybody else it reminded me if you think about the main like guiding like North Star to Paul Graham's uh essay on I think episode 314 how to do great work essentially he's just telling us over and over again what
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are you intensely interested in what are you irrationally curious about if you're interested you're not astray just follow that and the reason I think he gives that advice is because we see this when you do that you wind up like Bugatti you
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know more about the things that you're intensely interested and curious about than anyone else in the world and so this idea that he starts out he's like listen I make the best products in the world they're going to be expensive but you're not going to
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anything better than them this is where these cult-like followings start to use the terminology of Steve Jobs Bugatti believed that he made insanely great products and what happens a you develop a cult-like following and then those
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Believers of Bugatti go out and recruit more Believers of Bugatti and so this guy named Dr espanet winds up buying a Bugatti he's so obsessed with it he tells everybody about it he tells he just happens to be really good friends with this world famous Pioneer Aviator
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this guy named Roland garos who's going going to wind up becoming a really close friend of uh Bugattis and so Goos goes to check out like this guy my friend doctor espanet won't shut up about this guy let me go to mosim and see what's
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going on so he says he went to visit Bugatti his first impression was one of surprise when he entered the gate instead of the usual coming and goings of a car factory he saw Bugatti dressed for writing walking a fine pony around the courtyard and this actually enhances
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his work this is really really important Bugatti loved writing and kept a number of thorough breads many of his ideas and solutions of mechanical problems came to him while writing it was a means of relaxation he would interrupt his
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writing and go to the workshops when the idea popped in his mind right in writing breaches uh if he had suddenly found the reason for a car part not working properly this is one of my favorite ideas from David oggy's book confessions
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of an advertising man it's this idea that you have to keep open the telephone line to your unconscious and you see this all the time like why do I you have ideas uh like suddenly like a problem that you're like unconscious or even subconscious
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mind is like mulling over you know maybe pops up when you're in the shower or you're on a walk or whatever whatever the case is in Bugatti's case it's riding as Horses and so you see this throughout history these people talk about the fact that like these ideas
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spawn to mind when you're doing something else and so ogave says I have developed techniques for keeping open the telephone line to my unconscious in case the disorderly repository has anything to tell me I hear a great deal of music I take long hot baths I Garden
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I go into Retreat among the Amish that is not a joke he actually did that I watch Birds I go for long walks in the country and I take frequent Vacations so that my brain can lie fallow no golf no cocktail parties no tennis no Bridge no
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concentration only a bicycle while thus employed in doing nothing I receive a constant stream of telegrams from my unconscious and these become the raw material for my advertisements that same idea is happening exactly where we are in this
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bucati book but I found fascinating is when Roland garos this famous Pioneer Aviator is on the visit uh on this visit to the factory he finds out who he he's interested in a car what happens he finds out who just bought this car the
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Duke of Bavaria that just bought the car and this Duke just happens to be the brother-in-law to the king of Belgium and so it says garos ordered one right then and there and so me and my friends use this word setup all the time and so
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the way what a setup is is like how ises where you live and where you work and the world you're building for your company and everybody in it like how does it interact with each other Bugatti has one of the best setups at M shame M shim than anybody I've ever come across
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it gets even better in addition to having this like English mansion on the property for his family his Workshop the stream of trouts the gardens uh the horses he also has a landing strip in a meadow a lot of the early Bugatti customers there's a there was a big
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overlap between people that wanted super fast cars and were also capable of flying you know when they're flying planes like we're talking about like right Flyers this like 1910 1915 kind of planes and so they come in to mshim and
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they just land right in the meadow next to the factory and so between the increased production the fact that he has he's finding his own racing team obviously that's where a lot of people are finding us out about his cars and making uh and making orders like between
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the racing and the increasing in the prod production this is a 7day days a week long hours thing this is how he's building his company my small Factory acquired great import importance Bugatti said production was increasing the
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nights were often short but orders were flowing in and then we get to the first of many turns in Bugatti's life that are outside of his control but but destroy his business there's a paragraph that comes later in the book after he dies he
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dies relatively young and I would make the argument that he actually died of a broken heart and going to read this paragraph that gives you an overview for what's about to happen in his life it says he was a Creator and a humanist
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before he was an industrialist and then he showed himself to be an astute and Wily businessman conducting the Affairs of his Factory with success despite Keen competition financial difficulties and the destruction of two Wars this is
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World War I that is going to take all of the progress that Bugatti has been making so he's around 33 years old at this point he has around 200 employees okay he's been working at this since he was about 17 and is going to be destroyed then came the War World War I
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and Bugatti's plans for the future had to be sheld and it's amazing that he was able to realize that he's in trouble and then he has to get out right away a lot of people would hesitate it's like I'm going to lose everything and so his
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Factory now it's in France but at this point it was considered German territory so like France and Germany's constantly fighting over I think you pronounced it like Al Al slin I think is what it's called now but at this point in 1914
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he's in German territory he's like oh I got to get the hell out of here so it says his decision uh was me it others might have hesitated weighed things in the balance consider the importance of what was at stake but not he as soon as
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mobilization was declared he decided to close his Factory and leave Mame with his family giving up the rich prospects of his flourishing business and so the book goes into great detail about how like perilous the journey is he winds up getting his family out of Germany gets
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him back into Italy now this is a crazy thing he sneaks back into occupied German territory because he has to hide his engines remember this part cuz this is going to become really important a few years from now the factory was later taken over by local authorities but
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before then soon after seeing his family safely to Italy Bugatti returned for a few days he buried the engines of three racing cars in the grounds of his estate these engines which were his latest constructions were never detected and he
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was able to recover them at the end of the war and so imagine you're in his shoes you have I think three kids at the time a wife a successful business essentially his business is going to be paused for five or six years he's eventually going to go back and reclaim
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it he's going to lose it again in World War II which we'll get to but what was he doing like what was he doing during World War I he's not building cars anymore and so we see for the first time that his mechanical genius is universal
33:13
and he does this for his whole life like he'll make cars he'll make boats he'll make airplane engines he'll make rail cars this guy is a legit genius so he starts designing during World War I he's making airplane engines for the allies
33:26
and specifically for the American I just want to pull out one part cuz it it made me laugh uh this American company I think this is 1916 maybe around there uh he's making he's making airplane engines for him it says Bugatti received a nice
33:40
fat check less than a week after his first contract with the Americans and not being used to such promptness on the part of official departments he went to the bank with the check and had to ask if it was valid and so this is the first
33:54
time that the book mentions but I need to bring this to your attention cuz it's I'm obsessed with Bugatti the fact the way he built his life the way he built his business everything he did I find him fascinating but this is something that also is extremely important this
34:08
idea that friends greatly enhance the Magnificent mysterious Odyssey that we call life and Bugatti was a good friend he prioritized it I thought this was very fascinating an account of Bugatti's life would not be complete without
34:21
mention of his friendships work was not everything to him he opened up when in the company of a few friends he was fortunate enough to enjoy several great friendships during the course of his life and one of these was Roland Gros who I'd mentioned the famous French
34:35
Aviator the one that would land in in the in the meadow at uh at Bugatti's setup right listen to the the the how deep their friendship was this is incredible it's even more incredible than the fact that there is war raging on around them right these are Europeans
34:50
in 1915 garos offered Bugatti all the money in his bank account about 200,000 Franks it was his whole Fortune you're helping the war effort go said just as I am but I know of your difficulties you have a wife and three children I'm a bachelor
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and I might get killed at the front any day G has sent Bugatti a picture of them together says to Tor Bugatti the incomparable artist who alone knows how to give life to Steel in admiration and friendship sign Roland garos this is how
35:25
crazy this is he says I'm a bachelor and I might get killed at the front line any day he does get killed he is a pilot in World War I and he dies I think a year or two after this and so the deeper we get into this book I think you can see why I had such
35:41
a like a passion and positive response to Bugatti because like there's just so many lessons like he he can teach us right he's like one can you find what you you have a natural aptitude for and a deep curiosity for this is going to
35:53
sound a lot like I feel it's like Bugatti is like the the the personification of Paul Graham's essay how to do great work right it's like what do you have a natural aptitude for and a deep curiosity for can you work in that environment can you make a
36:05
commitment to be the best in the world at what you're doing can you care deeply about making truly great work and then can you also make room for other humans in your life it's not just all work all the time like you saw in the way he
36:18
built his entire life his kids were in the factory his son Jean who's going to die in a car accident when he's I think 30 or 32 it's it's it's right before Bugatti's going to die shortly there after like his kids were involved in the business his wife was involved in the
36:32
business from day one he creates an inn on the property so friends can say customers can say he was relentless about building deep friendships inside and outside of his industry and helping them as much as possible and then another thing listen what I'm about to
36:45
read to you your entire business was destroyed you have to start from scratch and Bugatti's like all right then might as well get to it at the end of World War I this is the state of his business when Bugatti saw his Factory again at
36:55
the end of 1918 only the walls were reviewed what remained of the machinery and the tools was scarcely good for scrap a completely Fresh Start had to be made but Bugatti did not hesitate and so before the war he had his own company he was self-contained
37:09
now he's like okay well I have to build up everything from scratch I need a lot of money I don't have a lot of money what I do so this is how he financed the rebuilding to finance his business he sold the license to produce his engines
37:20
as well as a few of his patents to various foreign car manufacturers so all these uh they list a bunch of these companies he does this in Italy he does this in England and he does this in Germany as well and then he goes and recruits some of his former employees
37:32
and so then we see this again cut against the bias inside your industry there's a mass production had grown rapidly over the last four to five years right and so some of his compet quote unquote competitors were now mass-producing and making a 100 cars a
37:46
day this was Bugatti's response Bugatti true to his standards took no interest in that aspect of things as in the past he was more concerned to create than to produce and this is crazy how good he was remember he's picking up almost six
38:01
years later imagine having your business paused like that he recovered the three engines that he had buried they were just as he had conceived them in 1914 the general arrangement of these engines is worth recalling for these cars were
38:14
to dominate racing in the early 1920s 6 years later almost to the day one of those cars was entered for the L Car Grand Prix at L man and one and part of the reason he was able to win is because it goes back to this idea of cutting against the bias at the time
38:34
a theory was generally accepted that the heavier the weight of the car the better that the car would hold the road at high speed Bugatti however believed the opposite and he proved that he was right this lighter car would win the race with
38:49
a lead of nearly 20 minutes this car was called the Bugatti type 10 now I skipped over it earlier but there's ACH bunch of examples in the book where he's just got a bunch of controversial Innovations and they're controversial because they're
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essentially the exact opposite of what everybody else in the industry thought and believed at the time so he was the very first person to place the driver and the engine low and towards the back of the car and like many things at the very beginning one of his Engineers I
39:16
worked for him that was right in the preface of the book would talk about hey he he preached to us like follow your in your intuition like you should you should trust in your in intuition the reason that he made this Innovation he
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instinctively thought that this was going to be better for aerodynamics there was no way to test this it's just something he instinctively believed every other car designer at that time believed that that the driver being seated higher was better and we all know
39:38
the result because now all the cars do it like Bugatti had figured out you know 100 years ago now you could say cutting against the bias is kind of a form of maybe confidence or even stubbornness there's a a negative side to it like
39:51
what if you're wrong and in the case like he's winning a ton of races and the races are what's fueling like his sales growth right this is the early 1920s now what was fascinating is he starts to lose a bunch of races because he was
40:03
stubborn he refuses to to add all of his competitors in the initi were adding blowers so these are superchargers and Bugatti thought that was like vulgar like almost unnatural so he he resisted in doing it takes him like a few years to realize hey I have to do this and
40:17
then once he does it like he completely dominates I think they win like I don't know like 2,000 races or something like that but this was fascinating and it was Bugatti's description of their sales strategy all the finest trophies were
40:27
won easily by engaging in every important race without pause and so Bugatti like Ferrari after him realizes hey if I just win if I just focus on winning on the racetrack then the sales will take care of himself you see this in how they advertise his
40:43
models his cars he knew that racing was the one true means of showing the quality of his cars and enabling him to improve on it he was also well aware of the publicity he got from racing and right from the beginning his annual catalog proudly listed his
40:56
successes so the beginning of the catalog is just like here's all the races I want boom a list of them all his racing and this is why it's important all of his racing cars were catalog models available to anyone and many amateur drivers were only too ready to
41:10
purchase them and so something that reappears in the career of Bugatti is the fact that he was constantly willing to scrap what he's working on to build something new he would not rest on his Laurels and so what I would think about
41:20
is what he's about to tell you and I here is like when you go do something great just go off and do something else that's great Don't Stop Till celebrate the win or like admire what you did just keep going like you you just have to keep pushing progress forward and so he
41:33
wrote it is tempting to stop when you've made some progress but if you want to follow it up you can't stop that is why I shall go on as long as I'm able to I know you can't always win but when I'm beaten I shall know why and I'll beat my
41:45
rival later on when a car manufacturer builds a racing car he always employs the best possible the best workmen the best Engineers all the best that his firm can provide nothing nothing is too good nothing is too dear you've got to
42:00
win whatever the cost you work day and night if necessary okay so I want to spend more time going over Bugatti setup or what it was like at mole shine and I think this is important because it's going to be a reflection of him of the man of his
42:16
personality visitors came expecting to find a factory and none was able to hide their astonishment there was a factory obviously and even one of the most perfect of its kind for Bugatti sometimes found that the machines tools that he needed were not available and so
42:29
he designed and made them himself of course he did however MIM was more than that it was a house and a family it was a little world where the attitude to things and the relations between people were out of the ordinary a customer came
42:46
to take delivery of a car and got the impression that he had suddenly discovered in this small corner of alace this little fum of an Italian of the Renaissance who had strayed into the Industrial Age and so this is what a typical experience would be like for a
43:03
customer on arriving all I could see at first were some stables close to a country house The Stables were being used as a workshop and above them in a loft was an office reached only by a short ladder there sat the accountant I
43:16
was explaining the purpose of my visit to him when Bugatti came up he was wearing a kernel helmet and a well-fitting cream silk jacket he took me to see the work Workshop everything there except for the cylinders which were made for him somewhere else
43:32
everything was produced in his workshop and this is one of the most important lines in this entire section which this section goes on for quite a for quite a while the personality of its founder continue to show in even the smallest
43:46
details and unexpected ways they start calling this the mshim touch what a surprise you come across a hamlet of long low buildings with brass-bound doors of polished Oak and with cement paths between them all so clean and tidy
44:03
not a loose stone or a spot of dust anywhere a car factory surely not and yet it is you get the feeling of being suddenly confronted with something unusual and Beyond classification the explanation of The Shining cleanliness of all the doors in
44:21
the various workshops was quite simple an employee one employee did nothing else but keep the paths and the workshop's floors clean and the door plates from which all oily marks left by mechanics were wiped away immediately when they were made that is also
44:40
something that pops up over and over again in the book that he insisted on everything being organized and clean 24/7 to the point where he somebody's job was to make sure the Rocks were off the pathway and if there was a smidge of
44:52
oil on a door as a mechanic left that had to be wiped away immediately and so before moving on I want to go back to this one line the personality of its founder continued to show in even the smallest details and unexpected ways the best way to think about this is a line
45:07
that I read in one of the 10 or 15 books whatever I've read on Steve Jobs it says Steve made and remade Apple in his own image apple is Steve Jobs with 10,000 lives you could say the same thing about Bugatti and another example of his very
45:19
unusual personality Bugatti once received a bill for electricity accompanied by a letter written in terms which he considered to be discus he said as much to the manager adding come and see me in a year's time I shall have something interesting to show you a year
45:33
later he had built his own electricity generating plant there was nothing at mosim which did not bear the mark of one man his tastes his wishes and even his moods this is one of my favorite parts of the book because it just goes on and
45:51
on page after page and I finally just wrote I finally just wrote this note to myself all of this is excellent I love everything about Bugatti he was always well-dressed and wore his clothes with a quiet Elegance whether at the factory or
46:05
in town he had a style and manner all of his own he was an optimist he had a remarkable gift of observation which spiced his conversation he was genial and generous in every respect and his egoism only showed if his habits were
46:21
threatened he was excitable at times young and Lively in spirit tackling problems with enthusiasm he liked beauty in all things cost and financial return were secondary matters he made plenty of money nevertheless and almost without
46:37
noticing it Bugatti used to say that work was never an effort to him that he built up his business while enjoying himself he was not envious of others like some English Squire his personal interest were in his estate and his horses and a boat or two High Society
46:55
held little interest for him and when obliged to attend social functions he did so without real pleasure the truth was that his work was his life and in matters of work he had a horror of Utopias and of mad schemes his insistence on the job being
47:12
done properly down to the smallest detail and for any ordinary task such as shoing a horse was evident of his concern for exactitude and this made a great impression on all those who lived and worked within his orbit his brain was always at work he had no fixed hours
47:32
he sometimes spent many hours in the drawing office at night for he found that the silence helped him to work out problems which had cropped up during the day his starting point was always to create the most extraordinary things and so then I want to get into
47:48
more of how Bugatti worked and why this reminded me of an excerpt from James Dyson's first autobiography so said Bugatti had no technical education and possessed no diplomas he had learned as he went along from experience and a
48:01
natural mechanical ability and so then he tells a story about working as apprentice when he was 18 and realizing hey the best way to learn something is to try to take it apart and try to figure it out so he comes across this engine and he says I dismantled it all
48:12
and I said to myself what a mess this is I must put this right and that's how I began to understand internal combustion engines and so this race car driver is one of the first uh customers he ever had purchased one of the first uh cars
48:24
that Bugatti ever produced and he says I was struck by the simp licity and directness of the Mechanical Solutions in technical schools apprentices were taught that the outlet valves of an engine had to be wider than the inlet
48:34
valves because the volume of gas was greater Bugatti was the first to do just the opposite making his Inlet valves the larger which is what everyone does now and so in his autobiography called against the odds James Dyson tells a story where he's a young man
48:49
apprenticing with an older engineer this guy named Jeremiah fry who was one of the biggest influences on James's career and this is what he learned here was a man who was not interested in experts he meets me he thinks to himself here's a
49:01
bright kid let's employ him and he does he risks little with the possibility of gaining much it is exactly what I do now at Dyson this attitude of employment extended to Fry's thinking in everything including engineering he did not when an
49:15
idea came to him sit down and process it through pages of calculations he didn't argue it through with anyone he just went out and built it when I came to him and I say hey I have an idea he would offer no more advice than to say say you
49:27
know where the workshop is go and do it but I would say but we need to weld this thing well then get a welder and weld it when I asked if we shouldn't talk to someone about say hydrodynamics he would say the lake is down there the Land Rover is over there take a plank of wood
49:43
down to the lake tow it behind the boat and look at what happens now this was not a modus operandi that had had encountered before College had taught me to Revere experts and expertise fry ridiculed all that as far as he was
49:55
concerned with enthusiasm and intelligence anything was possible it was mindblowing no research no workings no preliminary sketches if it didn't work one way he would just try it another way until it did the root principle was to do things your way it
50:12
didn't matter how other people did it as long as it works and it is exciting people will follow you and so those last few years at mshim were really the peak of his life and over the next 10 years he has to endure unbelievable tragedy until he dies the
50:32
first thing to fall is the economy the Great Depression causes Bugatti to have to look for other ways to make money so he has to actually travel away from the place that he wants to be the most because he's going to be designing uh
50:43
rail rail cars for the French government in 1931 faced with a precarious financial situation Bugatti had to turn to rail Locomotion the development and production of these rail cars resulted in Bugatti being absent from Mim for
50:57
long periods for he was obliged to maintain close contact with the engineers and administrators of the French Railways his son Jean thus became gradually responsible for the MIM Factory so his son Jean was supposed to be his successor the management of the
51:12
MIM Factory passed from father to son so the depression causes a terrible financial situation he then is forced to spend time away from where he wants to be his son has to run the factory then there's a bunch of Labor unrest spreading throughout France
51:27
all these other factories were being shut down completely by strikes this is where Bugatti's actually like superhuman level of confidence actually plays against him because he thought it would never happen he's like oh my employees love me one big Factory after another
51:40
was affected and brought to a standstill Bugatti thought his Factory was safe from trouble I've got nothing to worry about he kept saying my work people know me they're part of my family but the impossible happened the men stopped
51:51
working and there were protest marches the factory was occupied it was a terrible shock and Bugatti was embittered by what he took to be so much ingratitude and an attack on him personally that is in 1936 this is 1939 the death the tragic death of his son
52:09
and successor this young life was so rich in promise and yet so abruptly ended Jean met with a fatal accident on August 11th 1939 while testing the car which had just won the Lem man 24 hours he went out after dinner with the family saying I'll be back in 15 minutes in
52:28
answer to our warnings to be careful remember this is his sister writing this book he went out after dinner with the family saying I'll be back in 15 minutes and answer to our warnings to be careful he was test driving a Bugatti at high
52:41
speeds on a Country Lane a cyclist pops out begins to cross the road Jean breaks hard swerves and hits a tree killing himself immediately Bugatti is devastated breaks down sobs uncontrollably as you imagine when he hears about the death of his son less
52:59
than a month later the second world war begins and Bugatti loses his business again the German invasion and subsequent cituation of France brought an end to his business for the factory was taken over by the Germans his life's work was
53:13
gone after the war in order to have the business and premises restored to him a court action became necessary I want to pause and review before we get there 1931 Great Depression happens he has to go work for the railways right now 1936
53:27
there's a strike at his Factory 1939 his son dies in a car crash a month later start of World War II Germans invade he loses his Factory and his home 1944 his wife dies of a painful illness 1945 he has to fight the French government to
53:44
try to get mosim back he loses the first court case which causes him a great emotional shock and caused a nervous breakdown during the appeal he's has a nervous breakdown he's depressed he gets influenza then he has a stroke that leaves him half paralyzed slips into a
54:01
coma for 4 months and dies on August 21st 1947 at the age of 66 10 days before he dies and while he's in a coma he wins the appeal on the French government give him back his Factory and his home he was thus deprived of the joy of seeing his
54:21
Factory returned to the Bugatti family the official cause of death may be a stroke but I think he died of a broken heart I want to end by reading from the epilogue goes back to the importance of friendship throughout the life of
54:36
Bugatti there is a letter called my friend Bugatti written by a famous French Aviation pioneered Gabriel voen it is written about 20 years after Bugatti died and I think it's a great place to end this conversation about a great man there can be no better ending
54:53
to this book than the moving testimony of friendship the famous aircraft Constructor Gabriel voon has written we were both more or less the same age but God was by his cradle on September 15th 1881 and bestowed all her gifts onto him
55:09
I do not remember our first meeting I seem to have known this amazing engineer all of my life Bugatti was already one of us in the pioneering days of aviation in 1908 our laboratory was in Paris and there he used to visit us once a week I
55:25
always kep kept our mechanical problems for that friendly occasion there seemed to be no snags or obstacles for this extraordinary man one had only to State the problem for it to be solved many writers have written about the
55:40
Productions of the MIM Factory but none of these writers have given us a faithful picture of the real Bugatti some have recalled his charm others have disclosed his whims none of them has seemed able to bring to life this great man the immense Talent of this born
55:59
engineer was concealed beneath a cloak of fun and gayy and he gave the impression of never taking himself seriously I am now 86 years old and in these last years of my life I can look back and measure the worth of the men I have known in the course of a career
56:17
full of surprises most of my contemporaries were incapable of making an effort beyond what was required of them I have there for very Vivid Recollections of those few who were capable of actions and initiative in his book The Revolt of the masses Jose
56:35
Ortega iget wrote These inspired words this is one of my favorite paragraphs in the entire book a human life by its very Nature has to be devoted to something or other to a glorious or humble Enterprise an illustrious or obscure Destiny this
56:52
is a strange but inexorable condition of things thinks Ortega eaet must have known Bugatti at the time of writing those lines the production of cars at molim was really just a game to my friend and his successes came easy to him he was one of the last car
57:11
manufacturers able to imagine whole to assemble in his mind the most varied and complicated mechanical constructions effortlessly yet with exactness in a word Tori Bugatti was one of the last mechanics truly worthy of the name a
57:29
larger volume would be needed in order to give a full and clear account of his influence after the war This truly French technician was the victim of regrettable incidents and his health was thereby affected he passed away in 1947 in 1913 I lost my brother Charles
57:49
in a car accident for which a third party was entirely to blame he was only 30 yet he must have found death to be kind he was at the wheel of a Bugatti and that is where I'll leave it for the full story I highly highly highly recommend buying the book if you
58:09
can I think there's only a few copies available I'm so glad this book came into my life it was the perfect vehicle to learn about the genius that was Bugatti I will leave a link down below if you buy the book using that link
58:20
you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time that is 316 books down 1,000 to go and I'll talk to you again soon I'm glad you made it to the end Founders listeners are not quitters if you have not already signed up for the founders AMA private feed I
58:35
highly recommend doing that right now I will leave a link down below but it's also always available at Founders podcast.com because of the insane amount of research that I have done over the last seven years for this podcast I have
58:47
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59:01
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59:16
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59:43
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