On the day of Giorgetto Giugiaro’s 85th birthday, Bugatti celebrates one of the legendary designer’s most eminent and revered works of art, the Bugatti EB112, which at its reveal in 1993 was seen as one of the most radical and sophisticated saloon cars in the world.
As the covers were pulled off the Bugatti EB112 at the Geneva Motor Show in 1993 its design and engineering were a sensation. Creating an entirely new ultra-luxurious Grand Tourisme segment in a way that only Bugatti can, drawing on impeccable heritage and a dedication to cutting-edge technologies, the EB112 was also completely redefining the idea of a saloon car.
Giorgetto Giugiaro still bestows the EB112 with pure adulation today: “The Bugatti EB112 boasted a number of nostalgic styling features referencing the famous models of the legendary French brand from the late Thirties but presented in a car with innovative mechanicals. The EB112 in many respects was a dream car and a forerunner to what we today know as high-performance fastback models. It flawlessly combined design with technological and engineering features that were majorly ahead of its time.”
Giugiaro’s design was long heralded as a landmark achievement, with many critics lauding it as the world’s most beautiful saloon car ever created and a thoroughbred Bugatti that blended performance and luxury seamlessly.
The flowing aesthetic of the EB112 has proved to be a visionary touch. As a true precursor to today’s ‘form follows performance’ Bugatti philosophy, the EB112 combined such a daring and elegant aesthetic form to great technical effect, resulting in the development of a high-performance Berline car with outstanding aerodynamic capabilities. In many ways, the EB112 is now considered as a spiritual predecessor to both Veyron and Chiron.
In this respect, at the front, the EB112 elegantly exudes an aesthetic treatment that today is synonymous with Bugatti’s famed design DNA. Its grille, for example, laid the foundations for the grille arrangement that graced the Veyron 10 years later while the longitudinal rib from the bonnet, over the roof and dissecting the rear window, is a stylistic nod to the Bugatti Type 57 SC Atlantic, that was later recreated subtly on first the Veyron and then the Chiron.
Beautiful and timeless but also revolutionary, the EB112’s all-aluminum body covered a carbon fiber monocoque derived from the similarly advanced EB110 super sports car. This body and chassis technology was still groundbreaking in the sports car segment in 1993 and was an entirely new development among saloon cars at the time.
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09 August 2023
