The 73rd Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance was an event of its finest. The skies over the Monterey Peninsula were blue, broken only by a few clouds. A light breeze blew through the air, accompanied by Vivaldi concertos. The participants’ pristine paintwork glittered beneath waving banners. As the confetti cannons went off to celebrate Best of Show, a weather-beaten Bugatti race car thundered across the stage, driven by Fritz Burkard of Zug, Switzerland. The combination made history: Burkard is the first foreign owner to win the Best of Show award at Pebble Beach, and his car – a 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports – is the first preservation class car to receive the prestigious award.

“I’m not winning anything,” says Burkard, a Swiss collector who is bringing his children to the concours. “It’s about the car. I’m not doing anything – I’m just putting a smiley face.”

His Bugatti is not only the first of the brand to win Best of Show at Pebble since 2003, but also the only one with two plaques, he says. Burkard knelt down in front of the car in front, crouched down and pointed first to the plaque on the front of the car and then to the plaque on the vertical radiator hidden under the body. “That’s the radiator on the 1934 Grand Prix car. And you can even see that they changed the design – it had small dots; in 1937 it had bigger dots. Those are the little things that I find funny.”

This Bugatti is not just a race car, but a winning race car. It won the 1934 Belgian Grand Prix in the hands of René Dreyfus, the Frenchman who raced Bugattis privately for years and then for the factory in 1934. (We’ve told Dreyfus’ fascinating story in detail here; it’s worth it.) Later that year, the car took third place in the Monaco Grand Prix.

After selling four of his other Type 59 factory racing cars, Ettore Bugatti converted this one into a sports car. He removed the supercharger from the 3.3-litre inline eight-cylinder engine and added a second seat and a pair of doors. The car was then registered not as a Type 59 but as a Type 57 – the famous touring car that Bugatti built between 1934 and 1940 with the same 3.3-litre engine as the racing cars. The ex-racing car, chassis number 57248, did much more than just touring: it continued to race and win, in 1937 at Pau and at the Algerian and Marne Grands Prix in the hands of Jean-Pierre Wimille.

The Type 59’s black paint is different from that worn during those race victories: it was painted black with a yellow stripe at the request of Belgian King Leopold III, a Bugatti enthusiast who bought the car in 1937. Nearly nine decades later, it rode the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance stage wearing this paint, now worn and cracked. True to the Prewar Preservation class, it is a visible tribute to the car’s remarkable history.

“For me, preservation is the most important point,” said Burkard, “because it’s about originality – the car can only be original once, and this car has been untouched since 1937. Everything you see here is original, and the history of the car from its birth in 1934 to 1937 is amazing.”

“It’s great. Along with The Tank, it’s one of the most successful racing Bugattis.”

The Type 57G, one of several Bugattis with a “tank body”, won the 1937 24 Hours of Le Mans and set several speed records. Only three examples were built and today only one exists.

We wrote about Burkard’s Bugatti before when it was up for auction at Gooding & Company’s Passion of a Lifetime event in September 2020. It sold for £9,535,000, the equivalent of over $15 million today.

The car is powered by a 3257 cc inline eight-cylinder engine with two overhead camshafts, two Zenith carburettors and a Roots supercharger. The engine drives the rear wheels through a four-speed manual gearbox with dry sump lubrication. Power is 250 hp at 5000 rpm. The suspension consists of leaf springs and De-Ram shock absorbers, which attach a rigid axle at the front and a driven axle at the rear. The brakes are on all four wheels, but they are drum brakes with cable control; Ettore insisted on this.

Burkard likes to drive a 1934 Bugatti.

“I drove this car for three hours, Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning, Thursday morning and yesterday morning – seven o’clock, Bixby Bridge, alone and smelling the sea. Can it get any better?”

He also firmly believes in the importance of car sharing – especially with young people.

“That’s why I drive the cars out. There are always young people in my cars. That’s why I use Instagram – social media is a bit annoying, but it’s a way to reach young people and get them to love these old cars. I think that’s the key. If they only see Teslas, they’ll never appreciate something like this.”

Burkard pointed to the row of ventilation slots on the Type 59’s patina-rich hood, on which the yellow roses and the gold Best of Show ribbon rested. He hit his chest with his fist.

“If you let them take a ride in a car like this when they’re six years old, it will stay in their hearts for life.”