Weekly Motor Fix: Bob Turnbull’s beautiful million-dollar Bugatti

28 July, 2015

 

Any car that flashes the famous bright-red Bugatti badge can usually command a certain level of respect, admiration, and price tag. The late Bob Turnbull’s 1934 Bugatti Gangloff Roadster takes this idea and runs with it to very lofty heights.

Based on the same Type 57 platform as another Bugatti recently imported to the country by Hamilton collector Tom Andrews, which we featured earlier in 2015, Bob’s Gangloff-bodied roadster is a true one of a kind vehicle. Purchased in 1958 for the grand sum of £475.12s.6d, the Bugatti is now insured for a jaw-dropping $1 million.

After his death in 2012, Bob entrusted the Bugatti — as well as his other two classic vehicles; a 1907 Sizaire et Naudin, and a 1904 Humber Humberette — to his close friend Pete Brabant. Instructed by Bob to finish restoring the roadster, Pete did just that, and the car was completed by February 2015. The car now finds itself up for sale, with its proceeds to go to Bob’s own charitable trust, of which Pete is a trustee.

Bob was known for keeping to himself and dodging the limelight — a feat most difficult for someone who owned such an amazing vehicle. But those times spent alone helped massage and nurture Bob’s incredible knowledge of engineering and attention to detail — and that knowledge is clearly visible as you look over his immaculate roadster.

It’s not surprising that Bob wasn’t big on technology, which makes it all the more ironic that his Bugatti is being featured online on The Motorhood. We hope that whoever does purchase the big Bugatti can appreciate it as much as Bob did.

1975 Suzuki RE5

Suzuki had high hopes for its RE5 Wankel-engined bike launched in 1975. It had started looking at the Wankel engine in the mid-60s and bought the licence to the concept in 1970.
Apparently all of the big four Japanese makers experimented with the design, Yamaha even showing a rotary-engined bike at a motor show in 1972. But Suzuki was the only one of the big four to go into production. Like many others at the time, Suzuki believed that the light, compact, free-revving Wankel design would consign piston engines — with their complex, multiple, whirring valves and pistons, which (can you believe it?) had to reverse direction all the time — to history.

Westside story

For the young Dave Blyth, the Sandman was always the coolest car and he finally got one when he was 50. “I have always had a rule. When you turn 50, you buy or can afford to buy the car you lusted after when you were 20. I was 20 in 1979 and the HZ Sandman came out in 1978. It was the coolest of the cool — I just wanted one,” he says. “Back then a Sandman cost $4500 new and a house was worth about $20,000. I made about $30 a week so it was an impossible dream then.”
Dave was heavily influenced by the panel van culture of the time. “I started with an Escort panel van and upgraded to a Holden HD panel van with a 186ci six cylinder. I started a van club, Avon City Vans.