Almost without exception, every such personality-driven car company has eventually fallen on hard times. Ferrari did, which is how it came to be acquired by Fiat. Bentley did, which was the genesis of its link with Rolls-Royce.
Bugatti floundered after Ettore's passing but this was too distinguished a marque for history to record merely as a significant footnote. It was down to two equally autocratic gentlemen with visionary qualities like Ettore’s to breathe life back into it.
The first was an Italian, Romano Artioli, who even had a modern architectural masterpiece designed and erected in Campogalliano, Italy in which to build the Bugatti EB110 and other new models. Arguably Artioli spent too much money on this edifice, and his enterprise floundered in 1993, just when sales of the cars were beginning to take off.
The second was Ferdinand Piech, former boss of the VW Group, engineer by trade and grandson of Ferdinand Porsche. Much maligned by VW shareholders and the press alike because of his extravagant spending on the VW Phaeton and the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, Piech is a larger than life character whose ideas and his ability to implement them, extend beyond the realms of normal car company CEOs. The Veyron 16.4 was Ferdinand Piech's swansong before he officially retired as Head of VW.
New benchmarks are always interesting, and the McLaren F1 was undoubtedly the 20th Century's benchmark supercar for 12 years. In supercar terms, that is an eternity.
