Bugatti EB110

Overview

Romano Artioli bought the Bugatti name in 1987 and spent the next four years doing something nobody had tried: restarting a French marque as an Italian one. He built a factory at Campogalliano outside Modena, designed by the architect Giampaolo Benedini with marble floors, glass atriums and its own test track, and everyone called it La Fabbrica Blu.

The car came out of it in September 1991, timed to the 110th anniversary of Ettore Bugatti's birth and shown in Paris in front of the Grande Arche de la Défense. The EB110 had a 3.5-litre V12 with sixty valves and four turbochargers, four-wheel drive, six speeds and a carbon-fibre monocoque supplied by the French aerospace firm Aérospatiale. Nothing else on sale in 1991 had that combination, and most of it would not become normal for another decade.

Then the market for cars like this collapsed. Artioli bought Lotus in 1993, the EB112 saloon project swallowed money, and on 23 September 1995 Bugatti Automobili filed for bankruptcy with around 128 cars built. The factory is still standing, still empty. The EB110 is the most technically ambitious supercar of its decade, and almost nobody bought one.

Distinctions

The defining attributes and collector status that make this car garage-worthy.

Octane Files Select

Renowned for its history, engineering, or cultural weight.

Collectibility scorecard

Rated 1 to 10 on the traits that matter for owning, driving, and holding on to a car like this.

Desirability

8/10

Rarity

9/10

Driving thrill

8/10

Investment trajectory

8/10

Usability

4/10

Ease of restoration

2/10

Cultural impact

6/10

Electronic dependence

Fully analogHeavily electronic

Middle of the scale, and the middle of a transition. The EB110 runs electronic engine management and fuel injection for its quad-turbo V12, and the GT's rear wing raises itself on a speed signal. Past that, everything the driver touches is mechanical: an unassisted six-speed gate, hydraulic steering, no traction control, no stability control, no drive modes, and nothing that intervenes when four turbochargers arrive together. The four-wheel drive splits torque mechanically. What has aged is not the hardware but the support, because the diagnostic tooling barely exists outside two or three workshops, which is why the electrics feature in most ownership stories.

Market data

Demand tier, price trend, and typical values by condition. Our own assessment, not a quoted valuation.

Demand tier

EntrySolidHighBlue-chip

The proven elite. Values are established, liquid, and defended at every auction.

Value trajectory

AppreciatingStableCooling

Values are climbing. The market wants more of these than exist.

Price by condition

Driver

$1.3M

Excellent

$1.8M

Concours

$2.2M

Thin but real trading. The Classic Valuer counts sixteen GT sales all time at a 76 percent sell-through, a median since 2020 of £1,382,012 and a range from £986,964 to £1,562,693, with recent results consistent: £1,370,845 at RM Sotheby's in August 2026 and £1,382,012 at Broad Arrow in October 2025. Super Sports sit above, at $2,755,000 at Gooding Christie's Pebble Beach in August 2025 against the 2022 record of $3,167,500. The public ceiling now belongs to the GT factory prototype chassis C13, which made $3,625,000 hammer and $3,806,250 with premium at duPont Registry Live in 2026, four years after selling for $2,100,000 at RM Sotheby's Amelia Island. A 1998 Dauer EB110 SS failed to sell at Monterey in 2026 with bidding at $5.5m. The band below describes a production GT. Super Sports, prototypes and Dauer cars are all separate markets.

Values as of August 2026.

Buyer's guide

What anyone seriously considering this car should know first.

Why it's worth it

A carbon tub, four turbochargers and four-wheel drive in 1991, a decade before the Veyron

Callout

Bugatti's 1990s revival ended in bankruptcy on 23 September 1995 with roughly 128 cars built

What to watch for

The first question is what the car actually is. Between factory prototypes, pre-production cars, production GTs, Super Sports, the two works race cars, the Dauer-completed cars and the chassis that went to B Engineering, an EB110 needs its chassis number checked against a registry before anything else happens. The EB110 Registry exists for exactly this, and the specialists know the cars individually. Then find out whether it has been used. The recurring faults are cooling and turbochargers, and both are worst on cars that have sat. Radiators corrode, fans seize, hoses go brittle, and the first hot run after a decade in a collection finds all of it at once. A car with recent recommissioning invoices from a name you recognise is worth more than a lower-mileage one without them. Ask who has serviced it. Very few workshops will take an EB110 on, because it needs specific tooling and specific experience. Furlonger in the UK, Casil Motors in the United States and B Engineering in Modena are the names that recur. Damage to the carbon tub is the one deal-breaker. Patrick Tambay destroyed one in practice at Le Mans in 1996, and there is no simple repair.

The Story

Driving character

The EB110 does not behave like the mid-engined Italian cars it was built among, and that is the point. Four-wheel drive with 27 percent of the torque going forward means it launches rather than lights up, and it will do that on a wet road where a Diablo would be an act of faith. The V12 is small at 3.5 litres, and it is the four turbochargers that do the work. Below the boost it feels unremarkable for something with twelve cylinders. Above it, in the GT, there is a surge that keeps building past the point where you expected it to be finished, and in the Super Sport it arrives earlier and hits harder. The gearbox is a six-speed with a real gate and real effort. The steering is hydraulic and heavy at parking speed, then precise once the car is moving. What surprises people is the visibility and the size. It is narrow by supercar standards and you can see out of it, which makes it far less intimidating on a real road than the shape suggests. It was built to be driven places, and it will do that.

Design

Marcello Gandini drew the prototype and then watched it change. His version was sharper and more wedge-like, in the line he had been drawing since the Countach. Artioli wanted something softer and more Bugatti, and Giampaolo Benedini, the architect who had designed the factory, reworked the nose and the surfaces and did the interior. The production car is Benedini's as much as it is Gandini's, and the two are credited separately for exactly that reason. What survived looks like nothing else from 1991. The Diablo and the XJ220 are long and low. The EB110 is short, tall and dense, with a small horseshoe grille that reaches back to pre-war Bugatti practice and slatted intakes behind the doors feeding the turbochargers. The scissor doors are the only theatrical gesture in the whole car. The more interesting drawing is underneath. The carbon monocoque came from Aérospatiale, an aircraft supplier rather than a racing one. The V12 sits ahead of the rear axle with the gearbox in front of it, and the front driveshafts run past the sump to make four-wheel drive fit at all. It is not pretty. It is deliberate.

Motorsport pedigree

There was never a works team, because there was never money for one. What there is instead is one extraordinary night at Le Mans. In June 1994 a single EB110 Super Sport ran the 24 Hours for Synergie, entered by the French publisher Michel Hommell, with Alain Cudini, Éric Hélary and Jean-Christophe Bouillon driving. It qualified 17th overall and fastest in GT1 despite carrying the weight of its four-wheel drive. A fuel tank leak was patched with epoxy an hour before the start. All four turbochargers were changed during the race. It still climbed to sixth overall by early morning, and then, with under an hour to run, a suspected tyre failure put Bouillon into the barriers on the Mulsanne straight. Privateers kept going. Gildo Pallanca-Pastor and Patrick Tambay took fifth in GTS-1 at Watkins Glen in 1995. At Daytona in 1996, Pallanca-Pastor, Derek Hill and Olivier Grouillard ran 154 laps before electrical trouble stopped them. A second Le Mans attempt ended when Tambay destroyed the carbon tub in practice. Two factory race cars were built, quoted at 670PS. Neither ever got a season.

In culture

The EB110's most famous owner bought his in 1994. Michael Schumacher took delivery of a yellow Super Sport, chassis 39020, with a blue interior and mostly GT-specification trim, in the middle of the season that made him world champion for the first time. He kept it until 2003. Photographs of a young Schumacher beside a car from a company that would be bankrupt within eighteen months remain the shorthand for the whole EB110 story. The other cultural artefact is the building. La Fabbrica Blu at Campogalliano has stood empty since 1995 with the gates chained, the sign still up and equipment still inside, and it has become a pilgrimage for photographers and film-makers. Far more people have seen the factory than the car. In games it turns up across the Forza series, arriving in Forza Motorsport 3 and appearing since as a barn find and a car-pack regular. Gran Turismo never got it, although an unused EB110 logo file sits in the code of Gran Turismo 3, which is about as EB110 a fate as anything could be.

Rivals

Cars from other manufacturers that competed for the same buyers when new.

Jaguar XJ220

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Owning One

Why collectors want it

For twenty years the EB110 was the supercar nobody wanted to talk about, and the prices said so. That is over. The Classic Valuer's GT median since 2020 is £1,382,012 across sixteen tracked sales, a Super Sport made $2,755,000 at Gooding Christie's Pebble Beach in August 2025, and in 2026 the GT factory prototype chassis C13 set a public record at $3,806,250 with premium, having sold for $2,100,000 four years earlier.

The reasons are not complicated. There are roughly 139 of them counting everything, which is fewer than Ferrari built F50s. The engineering was genuinely ahead of its rivals in 1991 and is still interesting to talk about. And the story carries everything a collector market rewards: a doomed revival, a beautiful abandoned factory, a Formula 1 world champion in the ownership records, and a direct line from these cars to the Veyron.

Inside the range the hierarchy is clear. Super Sports lead, factory prototypes and the works race cars sit outside the normal market, and the GT is the car most buyers will actually meet. Dauer's post-bankruptcy cars are a separate argument entirely.

Which one to look for

Two road cars, and then a long tail. The GT came first: 560PS, 1,620kg, a speed-sensitive electric rear wing and a properly trimmed interior. The Super Sport followed six months later at the 1992 Geneva show with boost raised from 1.05 to 1.2 bar, a remapped ECU, larger injectors, a freer exhaust, 611PS, carbon panels inside and out that took 150kg out of the car, and a fixed rear wing in place of the GT's clever one. It is the connoisseur's pick and the market agrees. Bugatti's own accounting puts the split at 95 GTs and 39 Super Sports, including prototypes and the two works race cars. After the collapse the cars kept coming. Dauer Sportwagen bought the remains at the 1997 liquidation auction and finished a GT and three Super Sports between 1999 and 2000, then five Super Sport Light Weight cars in 2001 and 2002 at 481kW. B Engineering, founded by former Bugatti staff with Nicola Materazzi engineering, took the leftover chassis and built the Edonis: 3.76 litres, two turbochargers instead of four, rear-wheel drive, 680hp, and almost none finished. Establish which one you are looking at.

EB110 GT · 1991–1995

The launch car, shown in Paris in September 1991. 3.5-litre 60-valve V12 with four IHI turbochargers at 1.05 bar, 560PS, six-speed manual, four-wheel drive with 27 percent of torque to the front, Aérospatiale carbon monocoque, 1,620kg, 342km/h. A speed-sensitive electric rear wing and a fully trimmed interior separate it visually from the Super Sport.

EB110 Super Sport · 1992–1995

Introduced at the 1992 Geneva show, six months after the GT. Boost raised from 1.05 to 1.2 bar, remapped ECU, larger injectors and a freer exhaust for 611PS, carbon panels inside and out saving 150kg for a 1,418kg kerb weight, a fixed rear wing in place of the GT's electric one, and 355km/h. Michael Schumacher bought a yellow one in 1994.

What owning one is like

Everything about owning an EB110 starts from one fact: the company that built it has not existed since 1995, and most of the survivors have been driven very little. Cooling and turbochargers are where the trouble lives. Radiators corrode, fans seize, hoses harden, and a car woken up after years in a collection tends to find all three problems within a few miles. The answer is recommissioning by somebody who knows the model, not a local specialist learning on your car. The V12 itself has a good reputation among the people who work on them, and so does the gearbox. What is difficult is access. There are four turbochargers, twelve cylinders and a carbon tub in a very tight package, and jobs that are an afternoon on other cars run to a week here. The electrics age the way early-1990s Italian electrics age, and the diagnostic equipment is rare. Owners who use their cars regularly report far fewer problems than owners who do not. That is the lesson every low-production car of this era teaches, just with a larger bill attached.

Upkeep & parts

The good news is better than the reputation. When Bugatti Automobili was liquidated in 1997, Dauer Sportwagen bought the remaining parts stock along with five unfinished chassis, and published a full illustrated parts catalogue with part numbers. Mechanical parts for an EB110 are more available than for most cars of comparable rarity.

The constraint is people rather than parts. Very few workshops will take one on, because it needs its own tooling and its own experience. Furlonger in Kent has handled sales, servicing and recommissioning for a long list of EB110s including Artioli's own Super Sport. Casil Motors in Las Vegas services cars in the United States and is behind the Edonis Fenice revival. B Engineering in Modena, founded by the people who built the car, still supports it. In the UK, HR Owen at Hatfield is Bugatti's authorised site and works on both GT and SS.

Budget for recommissioning rather than routine servicing, and for shipping the car to whoever knows it. The EB110 Registry is where most owners start, and it is the reason chassis histories on this model are unusually well kept.