Бугатти Royale: Король дорог и символ роскоши.

The Bugatti Type 41, better known as the Royale, is a large luxury car built by Bugatti from 1927 to 1933, With a 4.3 m (169.3 in) wheelbase and 6.4 m (21 ft) overall length, it weighs approximately 3,175 kg (7,000 lb) and uses a 12.763 litre (778 cu in) straight eight engine. For comparison, against the Rolls Royce Phantom VII (produced from 2003 to 2017), the Royale is about 20% longer, and more than 25% heavier. This makes the Royale one of the largest cars in the world. Furthermore, with the limited production run and the premium nature of the vehicle, it is also both one of the rarest and most expensive. Ettore Bugatti planned to build twenty five of these cars and sell them to royalty as the most luxurious car ever, but even European royalty were not buying such things during the Great Depression, and Bugatti was able to sell only three of the seven made (six still exist, one was destroyed in a wreck). Still, the leftover engines were re used successfully in newly constructed high speed railcars for the French National Railway (SNCF). When the Royale went to the market in the 1980s, it sold for the price of more than 6 Ferrari 250 GTOs.

The Type 41 is said to have come about because Alsatian autobuilder Ettore Bugatti took exception to the comments of an English lady who compared his cars unfavourably with those of Rolls Royce.

The overhead cam straight 8 engine was based on an aero design that had been done for the French Air Ministry, but never produced. It was built around a single huge block cast in one unit with an integrated cylinder head, and at approx. long x high, is physically one of the largest engines ever made for a passenger automobile; it also had one of the largest displacements,, with each cylinder displacing more than the entire engine of the contemporary Type 40 touring car. It had a bore of and stroke of , 3 valves per cylinder (two inlet:one exhaust) driven by a centrally positioned single overhead cam. Only three bearings and only a single custom carburettor was used. Output was @ 1800 rpm, and of torque. Grinding of the engine valves was a regular maintenance requirement, and removing the engine valves to do so required removing and disassembling the large cast iron engine.

The chassis was understandably substantial, with a conventional semi elliptic leaf spring suspension arrangement at the front. At the rear the forward facing Bugatti quarter elliptics were supplemented by a second set facing to the rear. Strangely for the modern day observer, the aluminium clutch box was attached to the chassis not to the engine and the gearbox (also aluminium) was attached to the rear axle which meant it was part of the unsprung mass of the suspension. The clutch and gearbox were placed at odd locations to reduce noise and increase comfort, a difficult problem in those days. The transmission was mounted at the rear to offset the weight of the engine. Massive brake shoes were mechanically operated via cable controls: the brakes were effective but without servo assistance required significant muscle power from the driver. The car's light alloy "Roue Royale" wheels measured in diameter and were cast in one piece with the brake drums.

Reflecting some tradition based fashions of the time, the driver was confronted by a series of knobs of whalebone, while the steering wheel was covered with walnut.

A road test performed in 1926 by W. F. Bradley at the request of Ettore Bugatti for the Autocar magazine proved how exquisite chassis construction allowed very good and balanced handling at speed, similar to smaller Bugatti sports cars, despite the car's weight and size. All Royales were individually bodied. The radiator cap was a posed elephant, a sculpture by Ettore's brother Rembrandt Bugatti. and each has a different body, some having been rebodied several times.

To utilize the remaining 23 engines after the final Royale was built, Bugatti built a railcar powered by either two or four of the eight cylinder units. Seventy nine were built for the French National Railway SNCF, using a further 186 engines, the last of them remaining in regular use until 1956 or 1958 (sources differ). The railcar turned the Royale project from an economic failure into a commercial success for Bugatti. The engines were derated to produce only about 200 hp, but even in this form they provided excellent performance. One of the railcars took a world average speed record of for 43.9 mile (71 km).

In light of the rarity of the Type 41 and its associated price, it is unsurprising that some replicas have been made. The Schlumpf brothers so liked the original Dr Armand Esders coupe body on chassis 41111, using original Bugatti parts they had a replica made of the car. It now resides with the two originals they purchased at the Musée National de l'Automobile de Mulhouse. A year later this same team showed a part finished replica of the Weymann coach version of the 41100 Royale prototype at the Mondorf Classic Days & Concours d'Elegance. All three replicas built by the team were shown at the show, they were built for an undisclosed Dutch owner. The Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum has a replica of the 41100 Coupe Napoleon that was built for the 1968 film Rebus. The much smaller Panther De Ville (produced between 1974 and 1985) consciously resembled the Type 41.

In the 1985 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, all six cars appeared together on display. In 2007, five of the six cars were on display at the Goodwood Festival of Speed to celebrate the Royale's eightieth anniversary.