The story of the sunken Bugatti of the Lago Maggiore.
Text & Foto's : Karel van de Velde 
In 1925, a Bugatti car was brought into Switserland from Italy without customs’ declaration. When the Swiss customs started to trace the car to have the import duty paid, the owner had no better idea than to have the car disappear and dumped it into the Lago Maggiore near Ascona.
 
That was the story for years but nobody knew whether it was real or not until in 1967, a local diver indeed sighted the wreckage of a car at a depth of 50 m. The car could not be identified at the time and apart from an aborted effort to raise the it out of the lake, there were no further initiatives and it was forgotten again.
 
During the 2008 carnival of Locarno, the neighbour town of Ascona, a young diver, Damiano, was beaten to death by a group of drunken youths. His family, his co-divers, the entire local community was so shocked, that they decided to set up a foundation against youth violence in memory of Damiano.
 
In order to finance the foundation, his co-divers picked up again the idea of raising the dumped Bugatti from the lake, make a documentary movie about the event and sell the rights of it, and eventually expose or sell the wrecked car.
 
During the early months of 2009, prelimenary investigations started to found the location of the wreckage and determine whether or not it was a Bugatti. With the help of Hans Matti, the Swiss Bugatti authority, the wreckage was indeed identified to be a Bugatti, type 22.
 
As a result, the foundation decided to go on with its’  initiative, it assured itself the property of the wreckage, made all the necessary arrangements to raise the car and a date was set forward for this major event.
 
Sunday 12th July 2009, a large crowd assembled on the Piazza of Ascona, together with a number of Bugatti’s from the Swiss Bugatti Club. Hans Matti in his type 22 was given the honour of being parked as the first car, the others being a type 13 ( Andy Gantner ), Type 35 ( Jörg König ), type 35B ( Oskar Meier ) and my type 43.



 
At exactly 10.30, a large crane lifted the wreckage out of the water after being dumped there 84 years ago.
The car had been on its’ side, half submerged into the sand. As a result, the part that was under the sand was quite well conserved, half of the body still “intact” even the timber... And both left tyres still had air in them !
The chassis is complete with the engine, radiator, dashboard, etc as you can see on the pictures that I have attached.
 







As of today, I don’t know what the foundation will decide what to do with this car, sell it at auction, expose it as it is or have it restored and sold or exposed afterwards.
 
Anyway, if there is one Bugatti left with a miraculous history, this must be the one.
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