About
The Bugatti Trust occupies a purpose-built study centre and museum beside the Prescott Hill Climb in Gloucestershire, and its subject is narrow, deep and unexpectedly moving: the work of Ettore Bugatti and his son Jean, and the cars that came out of the factory at Molsheim in Alsace between 1909 and the Second World War. The Trust was founded to preserve the technical archive rather than to assemble a collection of vehicles, which makes it quite different from most motor museums.
What it holds is the paper: original drawings, blueprints, patents, correspondence, photographs and technical records covering the design of Bugatti cars, aero engines, railcars and the extraordinary range of other things Ettore Bugatti turned his hand to. For anyone restoring or researching a Bugatti these are the primary sources, and the study centre exists to make them usable. Displays draw on that archive to explain how the cars were conceived and drawn, which is a rarer and more interesting story than how they were raced.
The exhibition changes regularly and generally includes cars, engines, components and drawings together, so visitors see a chassis or a straight-eight engine alongside the sheets on which it was worked out. Recurring themes include the Type 35 that dominated Grand Prix racing in the 1920s, the Royale, the Atlantic, Jean Bugatti's coachwork designs and his death testing a Type 57 in 1939, and Ettore's habit of designing everything - furniture, surgical instruments, aeroplane engines - with the same aesthetic conviction.
The setting matters too. Prescott has been a hill climb course since 1938 and is owned by the Bugatti Owners' Club, so the Trust sits beside a working motorsport venue in a Cotswold valley. The museum is open to casual visitors on ordinary weekdays, Monday to Friday from March to October and Monday to Thursday in winter, with adult admission at £7.50 and children free.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- The museum opens to general visitors on weekdays only - it is closed at weekends, when Prescott holds motorsport events.
- Winter opening is shorter: Monday to Thursday from November to February.
- Tuesdays open half an hour later, at 10:30, because of staff training.
- Last admission is 15:30; the drawings reward a slow look, so allow at least ninety minutes.
- Adults pay £7.50 and accompanied under-16s are free.
- Check what exhibition is running before a long journey - the display changes regularly.
- Groups of up to thirty are welcome by prior arrangement on 01242 677201.
- There is no cafe on ordinary weekdays; Winchcombe is the nearest reliable choice for lunch.
Highlights
The Bugatti drawings archive
The Trust exists for its archive, and that archive is the reason serious Bugatti people come from all over the world: original drawings, blueprints, patents, works records and correspondence documenting how the cars were designed rather than how they performed. Restorers use these sheets to establish what a component should actually be, and historians use them to trace ideas across models and years.
Displays put drawings beside the objects they describe, which is the clearest way to show that a Bugatti was drawn as a coherent design and not assembled from expedients - the point on which Ettore Bugatti's whole reputation rests.
Ettore Bugatti as designer
Ettore Bugatti came from a family of artists - his father Carlo was a celebrated furniture designer, his brother Rembrandt a sculptor of animals - and he approached engineering as a designer rather than a scientist, insisting on proportion, finish and visual logic in components that would never be seen.
The exhibition traces this across the range of his work: cars, aero engines, a railcar, surgical instruments, fishing gear and furniture.
It also covers the costs of that conviction, since Bugatti's refusal to follow orthodox engineering practice produced both the most beautiful cars of the era and some spectacular commercial failures.
The Type 35 and Grand Prix racing
The Type 35 of the mid-1920s is the car that made Bugatti's competition name, winning on a scale that no manufacturer has matched since - hundreds of victories in the hands of works and private entrants across Europe. The Trust's material covers the design that made it possible: the hollow front axle, the alloy wheels with integral brake drums, the beautifully proportioned body, and the straight-eight engine.
Drawings, components and photographs are shown together, and the interpretation is candid about how much of the car's success came from selling excellent machines to skilled private owners.
Jean Bugatti and the Type 57
Ettore's eldest son Jean was a designer of extraordinary talent whose coachwork for the Type 57 - the Atalante, the Atlantic, the Ventoux - produced some of the most admired shapes of the 1930s. He was killed in August 1939 at the age of thirty, testing a Type 57C tank-bodied racer on a public road near Molsheim when he swerved to avoid a cyclist.
The Trust's material on Jean covers both his design work and his death, which effectively ended the firm's creative life and left his father, already worn by financial and political difficulties, without a successor.
Collections
The Bugatti Trust holds the principal technical archive relating to Ettore and Jean Bugatti and the Molsheim factory: original design drawings, blueprints, patents, works records, correspondence and photographs covering cars, aero engines, railcars and Ettore Bugatti's wider design output. The museum and study centre display material from that archive alongside cars, engines, chassis and components, changed periodically, with recurring attention to the Type 35 Grand Prix cars, the Type 41 Royale, the Type 57 and Jean Bugatti's coachwork.
The archive is used by restorers, historians and researchers worldwide, and the Trust also mounts themed exhibitions drawing on the wider artistic work of the Bugatti family.
Designing a Bugatti
Original drawings and blueprints shown with the components and cars they describe.
Molsheim: The Factory and the Family
Ettore and Jean Bugatti, the works, and the family's wider work in art and design.
Racing and Records
The Type 35 and Bugatti's Grand Prix career, with drawings, components and photographs.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.