Flashy four-door: the Cholmondeleys and their Figoni-bodied Bugatti

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Search for Figoni et Falaschi and the worldwide web will show you some of the world’s most outrageously styled designs of the 1930s, shown on the world’s most meticulously trimmed lawns. It’s the dramatic teardrop design, typically seen on Talbot-Lagos, that the coachbuilder from Boulogne-sur-Seine is best-known for. It’s the very same design, and many other equally extravagant ones, which have earned them the nickname "Phoney and Flashy."

There were many far more down-to-earth bodies coming from the French maître carrossier, though. Remarkable as it seems, the Bugattis clad by them are all fairly sober. Well, they seem a world away from the voluptuous Art Déco ornaments that their Delahayes and Talbot-Lagos, shown at world’s most prestigious concours, are.

This one, a 1939 Type 57 with Figoni et Falaschi's pillarless four-door saloon body, is perhaps the most spectacular of them, yet it still seems restrained and maybe even somewhat odd. Would you believe it to be the work of Figoni et Falaschi if you didn’t know? It’s an interesting car nevertheless, sold new directly through Ettore Bugatti to two of his most loyal clients in Britain: George and Sybil Cholmondeley, who were better known as the Marquess and Marchioness of Cholmondeley.

The Cholmondeleys had owned a range of Bugattis from a Type 22 to Types 35, 44, 49, 50 and even a Type 57 Atalante. With its four doors and lack of B-pillars, this one was commissioned for Lady Sybil, who is believed to have used it frequently on journeys to and from their residence of Houghton Hall in Norfolk, where it’s pictured here. Note the added windows above the windscreen making the light-coloured interior even lighter. The paint was black with gold coach lines on the wings, doors, boot and bonnet—a bit of a John Player Special livery avant la lettre...

The car is believed to survive with its original body and colour scheme. Has anyone ever seen it?

Words: Jeroen Booij
Pictures: Coachbuild.com

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