How a Bugatti Royale ended up with Connaught

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If historic Bugattis are well-trodden territory, then the Bugatti Royale is surely the ultimate example, with every nut and bolt endlessly researched, described, investigated and debated. Not exactly our field of expertise… or even our greatest interest. Still, we were surprised to stumble across an advertisement for one of these remarkable cars, offered for sale in July 1952 by… Connaught Engineering.

Yes, that famous engineering company from Send, Surrey, best known for its ingenious Formula racing cars and run by Rodney Clarke, who did more than a little wheeling and dealing between racing seasons. A great enthusiast with a particular soft spot for Bugattis, Clarke is known to have brokered the sale of several of Molsheim’s finest. These included a Type 57SC Atlantic, a Type 57SC Atalante, a Type 57S Corsica, the 1913 5-litre Type 18 originally sold to Roland Garros, and even a Type 59 Grand Prix car. But a Royale… now that really is something.

How did such a car find its way to Surrey? Clarke is said to have made regular trips to the struggling Bugatti factory in France after the Second World War, searching for spare parts and buying cars while the French franc was heavily devalued and the factory desperately short of cash. By then he had established himself as one of Britain's leading Bugatti specialists and had built up a direct relationship with the company. According to the story, three Royales (and we are more than happy to be corrected, as we make no claim to be Bugatti experts) had been bricked up behind a wall to hide them from the Nazis. Clarke supposedly struck a deal, selling two to Briggs Cunningham while taking the third home himself: the ex-King Carol of Romania car.

What happened next is rather better documented. Clarke advertised the car, the very advertisement we came across, by then carrying the British registration 'KDG 456'. He eventually found a buyer in Florida collector Dudley C. Wilson, who paid £4,500. Cheap? Well, a brand-new Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn cost almost exactly the same at the time. Around a decade later the car passed to Las Vegas casino magnate Bill Harrah and eventually, the irony, to Volkswagen AG.

We tried to find more information, or images from the period when the car was owned by Rodney Clarke and registered 'KDG 456', but were surprised, once again, to find very little. One clue came in a 2022 Bonhams auction, where a photograph of the car appeared in a lot described as 'Three pre-war Bugatti sales brochures and related ephemera, French', which realised £1,530. Surely that cannot be all there is to discover in the PreWarCar world, where the Royale has been studied so obsessively... can it?

Words: Jeroen Booij
Picture: Jeroen Booij Archive / Bonhams

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