Achim Anscheidt may be the director of design for Bugatti, but the first part of his morning commute takes place on a bicycle, not in a whining supercar. One recent Thursday, Anscheidt, wearing a dark suit and sensible blue tie, chained his modest brown 10-speed to a railing by Berlin's central train station, stopped for a cappuccino on the concourse, and then caught the 6:33 express to Wolfsburg, a little over an hour away, for another day's work shaping the future of one of the world's most storied automobile marques.
"It's such a jewel of a brand, and such a delicate subject," Anscheidt explains in the dining car, referring to his intensely secret charge: developing new paths for a company thrillingly soaked in racing heritage from the 1920s and '30s. Legendary Bugattis, like the 1924 Type 35, which racked up more than 2,000 racing victories, and the achingly lovely Type 57 models, forged new and unforgettable links between style and power. Today, the firm manufactures just one masterpiece—the Bugatti Veyron, the world's fastest production street car, a 16-cylinder, quad-turbocharged, 1,001-hp monster, which goes from standing to 60 in 2.5 seconds and, not long after, reaches 261 mph. At the Frankfurt auto show in September, Anscheidt helped unveil the Veyron Pur Sang, a raw and even faster version in unpainted aluminum and carbon fiber. Priced at $1.9 million and available in a limited edition of five, the Pur Sang sold out in 24 hours.
Read the rest of the story about the remarkable designer of a remarkable car.
[Note: Click here for a closer photo, via Wikipedia, of a Bugatti taken at the Tokyo Auto Show.]
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