Mystery of 'La Voiture Noire' cracked thanks to a 50-cent postcard. Update: April fools!

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Exciting news landed on our desk just as we were going away for Easter. In what could be the story of the year, an enthusiast—one of our readers, no less—has just solved one of history's greatest automotive mysteries thanks to a 50-cent postcard.

If this isn’t right up our street, nothing is. It’s the tale of how a 67-year-old pre-war car enthusiast, postcard collector and amateur history sleuth from central France managed to track down and find a long-lost Bugatti Type 57S Atlantic coupé, chassis number 57453, better known as La Voiture Noire, or so he tells us. He also says that an old postcard bought in a charity shop for fifty cents provided the vital clue for cracking the decades-old mystery.

Monsieur N. tells us he has owned a 1928 Peugeot cabriolet bodied by Million-Guiet for no less then thirty-eight years. “I bought the car as a project when I was twenty-nine years old. I had no experience of restoring cars whatsoever, but due to my passion I did fully restore the car over the next ten years or so, mostly at weekends. The car has become a family member since and has taken us to many places in France, Switzerland and Italy. Both my son and my daughter married in it, too.” The cars that make Monsieur N.’s heart really skip a beat, however, are Bugattis, for which he has always had a soft spot. He has dreamed of owning such a car, a Type 57 in particular, ever since he was a schoolboy and would see one every now and then, owned by a local barrister who used to take the car along to his holiday home not far from where our Monsieur N. grew up. But he never expected to find one of these cars himself, let alone one which half the Bugatti community has been looking for over the last eight decades.

Of the four Type 57 Atlantics made, chassis 57453 has become a kind of Holy Grail for Bugatti sleuths as its whereabouts have been unknown since 1939. This was the only Atlantic to receive a supercharger ex-factory and was reportedly used by Jean Bugatti himself originally. The story goes that the car was given to driver Robert Benoist in 1937, after he’d won the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the marque that year. By the time Benoist fled to England in the spring of 1940, the Bugatti had gone back to the factory, but there there all traces came to an end. Ettore Bugatti himself is believed to have been the last man who saw the car, either to put on a train or ship when the Hitler War broke out and so keep it from falling into German hands, or to hide it somewhere for the same reason. Many guesses have been made as to where he could have hidden the car so well, with the most popular rumour saying that it was hidden in the Bordeaux area.

That's just what our Monsieur N. had heard, too. Apart from being a great pre-war car enthusiast, he is also a collector of vintage postcards with an automotive theme. Over the last twenty years, he has built up a collection of over three thousand of these cards. And so, on a visit to a charity shop in the spring of 2021, he didn’t hesitate to buy a stack of fifteen particularly nice old cards when he saw that one of them featured prominently a Citroën Ami, Peugeot 403, Citroën 2CV, Renault 8 and a few other interesting post-war cars in a lovely and very typical French street scene. However, upon coming home and giving it a second look, he saw something else. There, in what looked to be a shoe shop, another car was just visible. Close inspection revealed it could well be a Bugatti, too.

What’s more, the trained eye of Monsieur N. thought it could very well be a Type 57. He thought there was a second car standing next to it, too. Could it have belonged to a retired salesman who’d traded his skill of selling shoes for that of restoring cars? When and where was this picture taken? Monsieur N. found out soon enough. This was the village of Saint-Aubin-de-Médoc in 1967. That was 54 years ago at the time, but why not go and have a look à la scène when the opportunity presented itself? He didn’t have to wait too long for that opportunity. Within a few months he got his chance and visited Saint-Aubin-de-Médoc, where he found the location without trouble. The shoe shop signs were clearly gone, but the actual premises were still there and hadn’t changed, much to his surprise. The outside of the building was still maintained to some degree, but it had clearly seen better days and was due for “More than just a lick of paint,” our French detective told us. Now, don’t jump in your car to head off to the village of Saint-Aubin-de-Médoc yourself. There’s more to come.

Monsieur N. found that the grandson of the then-owner, indeed a shoe salesman, still owned the place. And, yes, the shoe salesman died many years ago at the grand old age of eighty-five in 1981, but he’d definitely been a car enthusiast, according to an elderly neighbour. Monsieur N. was following a strong lead now and could not stop himself from asking questions about the car he'd seen in the postcard. “It was very hard to find the relatives of the shoe salesman but it turned out that he had a 69-year-old grandson, who lived in Lebanon. That man still owned the premises on paper,” he tells us. Talking to the grandson proved to be challenging, but our man didn’t give up easily, and was lucky when he found, very much by chancel, that an adopted daughter of his ex-wife still lived near to Bordeaux. Contact with this great-granddaughter-in-law of the shoe seller proved to be just a bit easier, and thanks to her Monsieur N. finally managed to make an arrangement to meet up and visit the old place.

“I can hardly describe the feeling when the garage door of the old shoe shop was opened,” he tells us. “There were three cars, which had clearly been gathering dust for many, many years.”
Two of these were Peugeots, a 302 and a 402 Familiale which were still in reasonably good condition, and there indeed was the Bugatti Type 57. It didn’t take Monsieur N. long to find that this was not just any Type 57, either. He tells us that the former owner must have been about halfway through a restoration of the car, with the body and many of the parts taken off the chassis.
“But there was absolutely no doubt that the chassis itself was a Type 57S, and the supercharger was still there.”
With trembling hands, our French detective located the number on the engine and wasn’t disappointed. The number was right there where it should be and when he read out the number to himself he found it hard to believe what he saw: 57453. The car appears to have hardly been used since the late 1930s, but still its owner decided to restore it, probably in the early 1970s if we are to go by the dates of the old newspapers used for packing the parts.
“There were boxes full of parts, all stacked neatly into a beautiful antique sheet cupboard standing next to the car. The body was still there, too, and although taken apart and in a not very good state, it was mostly complete. It's just a great shame that all of the rivets had been drilled out!”

Three years have passed since and the reason why he only contacted us now is that he is at liberty to reveal that the car has found a new and very good home. Last winter the mythical beast was removed in all secrecy from its long-term hiding place and was brought over to a well-respected restoration company in central France. Monsieur N. tells us that the restoration has already started and the plan is to have the car finished for Rétromobile in Paris next year. We will, of course, keep you posted.

!! Update: Most of you were sharp and realised what date today is. 1 April! I would like to thank our writer Jeroen Booij for this great article and his creativity !!

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