The Bugatti Baby II Tourbillon Is A Hand-Built Driveable Miniature Of A Legendary Race Car

Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with your phone or computer, and your eyes are not deceiving you. This is actually a Bugatti Type 35, just, smaller. Built by Hedley Studios in the UK, this Bugatti Baby II Tourbillon is an extremely detailed masterpiece celebrating the new direction of Bugatti, taking inspiration from the past 115 years but also the future in the form of the recently launched Bugatti Tourbillon. And even though it’s a toy for the ultra-rich, it’s an amazingly beautiful piece of craftsmanship!

The all-conquering bugatti Type 35

Just to get you up to speed, if needed at all, on what exactly a Bugatti Type 35 is, we have to go back in time about 100 years. Ettore Bugatti founded his eponymous automotive company in 1909, with the aim of building the very best cars on the planet. And with machines like the Type 41 Royale, the Type 57SC Atlantic and the Type 57 Atalante, he certainly left an everlasting impression in the industry. The Type 35 Grand Prix car, however, is a pure-bred racing car, introduced in 1924 and built until 1930.

The Type 35 has a steel ladder chassis with a hand-beaten aluminium body. Under the long bonnet resides a straight-eight engine, ranging from 1,092ccs to 2,262ccs depending on the exact model (Type 35, 35A, 35B, 35C, 35T and subsequent Type 37 derivatives. Power could be anywhere between 60bhp to 130bhp, which doesn’t sound like a lot but considering the car weighed just 650 to 750 kilos its power-to-weight ratio outperformed most other cars of that era. The Type 35 is also iconic for its looks, often painted in bright blue, with a horseshoe-shaped grill, the front wheels in positive camber, the spare wheel on the side and that sleek ‘Bordino’ tail section. Fun fact, it’s also the first car to be fitted with cast alloy wheels! Here’s a clip of a 1927 Bugatti Type 35B being driven hard up the GoodWood hillclimb;

Driven to huge successes by the factory racing team and countless privateers around the world, the Type 35 would go down in history as the racing car with the most wins to its name. It won the Targa Florio, one of the most intense road races in history, five years in a row. It’s also believed that at one point, the Type 35 won 14 races per week. The total tally of race wins exceeds one thousand, which is an insane number by a single car! I feel that perhaps only Porsche can come close with its equally iconic 911, but that has been racing for far longer than the legend from Molsheim.

The Bugatti baby ii Tourbillon

So what do we make of this Bugatti Baby II Tourbillon then? Well, as I said in the intro, it’s essentially a plaything for the very wealthy. Think of people who own one or more Bugatti’s ideally, and who want something to whizz around their estate in, or give to their kid to have fun with before getting a chance at firing up that V16-powered Bugatti Tourbillon that daddy just had delivered. Regardless, to me, it’s a celebration of an iconic racing car and an expression of pure craftsmanship, at three-quarters the scale.

The miniature car game, if that’s a thing, is nothing new as they have been around for decades. Just about a year or two ago I wrote a story on The Little Car Company, which has since been renamed/rebranded into Hedley Studios. The Type 35 by Hedley Studios isn’t new per se, as they’ve been building them for a while now, but not in this exact specification. They’ve taken a genuine 1924 specimen and have 3D scanned it from head to toe, to recreate it to the exact dimensions as the original. Despite its smaller scale, shrinking down the Type 35 to 75% of the original size, the Oxfordshire-based company takes over 200 hours to build a single car by hand. The aluminium body panels, painstakingly recreated to match the proportions of the original car, are formed on wooden bucks, just like Bugatti did a century ago.

From the front to the back, the car is an exact copy of the legendary racer, even down to the fuel pressure gauge in the hand-turned aluminium dashboard. The biggest departure is the electric drivetrain that powers it, which is to be expected in today’s day and age. The adjustable pedals are machined from a single block of aluminium, and the seat is clad in lavish light blue-tinted leather. The entire car is finished in the light and dark Aerolithe blue colour scheme of the Bugatti Tourbillon hypercar, separated by the signature C-shaped curve, highlighted by the hand-painted French flag.

Not a word is mentioned on limitations or prices for the Bugatti Baby II Tourbillon, although Hedley Studios states to make only 500 pieces in total of the downsized Type 35. Having a peek at the configurator (go on and try it, it’s quite fun!) sadly also doesn’t reveal pricing details, but rest assured this level of craftsmanship costs a pretty penny. After all, the 299-piece limited edition Ferrari 250 Testarossa they built had a base price of GBP 100,000 when I first wrote about it.

Literally putting things into perspective a bit, as a Bugatti Type 35 at 75% scale might not immediately give away much on actual sizes, the Baby II Tourbillon is 2.76m long and 1.05m wide with a height of 0.8m. Depending on the battery pack and the driving mode, it has a top speed ranging from 40kph to 68kph (it’s strictly limited to 30kph for the US and Canadian markets), and it has several driving modes as well. And if I’ve now left you wanting the real thing, auction house Bonhams has a 1926 Bugatti Type 35A on offer at this weekend’s Zoute Sale, with an estimate of EUR 1,200,000 to EUR 1,400,000.

For more information, please visit BugattiBaby.com or HedleyStudios.com.

Editorial Note: The images and information used for this article are provided by and used with permission of Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S unless stated otherwise.