Blast From The Past: Barn Find of the Decade – The 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante – One Of Only 17 Made

Relatives of eccentric doctor and compulsive hoarder Harold Carr (real surname too!) who passed away at the age of 89, found a 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante sealed up in an old garage in Gosforth, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, United Kingdom as they were clearing out a lot of his belongings.

The Dr, who never threw anything out, and he also left an Aston Martin and Jaguar to rot as well but the Jaguar was so dilapidated  that it had can only be used as spare parts.

The car with only 26,284 miles on the clock had not been driven since about 1960 and had been stored up ever since, it was very dusty but perfectly intact, even the tires still has some air in them.

It has a 3.3-litre, straight eight-cylinder engine, four-speed manual gearbox, can reach sixty miles per hour in ten seconds and has a top speed of one hundred and thirty miles per hour. The engine of the barnyard car was in excellent condition, it was clean and looked exactly as it did in 1937. With a little TLC – tender loving care – this engine would fire up once again.

The top speed of this car was quite outstanding for its day when we consider that most cars at that time could reach maybe fifty or seventy miles per hour, flat out!

The car has extra valuable attributes to it as it was once owned by Earl Howe, a prominent Le Mans British race driver. “It has all the finest attributes any connoisseur collector could ever seek, in one of the ultimate road-going sports cars from the golden era of the 1930s ” said James Knight, head of the international motoring department at Bonham’s  auctions.

The dashboard was a little dusty…naturally…but otherwise it was in perfect working condition and just needed a wipe down with a damp cloth.

The interior looked a little grimy, but the leather upholstery was in perfect condition, some leather restoration cream would put some life back into it.

This was extremely rare to find an old car in this condition, as the leather is the first part of a barnyard car to perish, it will either deteriorate over time or get nibbled by mice and termites.

Only seventeen of these Type 57S Atalante cars were ever made by Bugatti, so it is naturally valued quite highly and prized by fine automobile collectors around the world.

The car was wiped down to get all the dust off but generally it was left in “as is” condition for the auction.

The car sold for a very cool three million pounds, nearly five million dollars.  Not bad considering that the Dr bought the vehicle in 1955 for £895 the equivalent of £15,000 by today’s standards.

This car was a fantastic windfall for the family who found it and its one of those stories that has a warm glow about it!