Bugatti Builds One Car at a Time, by Hand, With Twenty People. Here's What That Actually Automates.
In 1909, a twenty-eight-year-old named Ettore Bugatti rented a decommissioned dye works in Molsheim, in France's Alsace region, and began building cars there the following year.¹ ² He had no formal engineering degree. He'd designed his first vehicle by the age of twenty, taught himself the rest, and spent nearly a decade training with two German manufacturers before striking out on his own.² His father, Carlo, was a furniture maker known for eccentric, sculptural designs — and Ettore approached a chassis the same way, as an object to be composed, not just engineered.³ He even built his own machine tools, because the ones on the market weren't precise enough for what he wanted to make.⁴
