Word: bugattis
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Horsy Movement. Author Purdy is not living on all cylinders himself, because he does not yet own a Lancia (only a handful of U.S. fanciers do), but by Kings of the Road standards he is not doing so badly: he owns and drives a 1927, two-seater Bugatti. He also owns an Isotta-Fraschini '28, a Peugot '14, and even a comparatively Johnny-come-lately Citroën 1939. He has also owned a Mercer Raceabout two-seater, vintage 1912, a real American beau ty. To drive a 1912 Mercer, says Purdy, is to feel "the movement...
Kings of the Road is part love song and part a dirge over what, and how, the conventional men are willing to drive. Not for Purdy the "chrome piled on chrome and tin upon tin." Lovingly he writes of Designers Ettore Bugatti, Fred Duesenberg, Frederick Henry Royce and of Driver Tazio Nuvolari. To Purdy, as to most addicts, Nuvolari is II Maestro, "indis putably the greatest driver who ever lived." Not on "dull" tracks like the Indianapolis Speedway did II Maestro show his genius, but in grueling road races run day & night. Nuvolari, now 60 and retired, was "hard...
...admiring eyes to see. There are even some, as delicately geared as Author Purdy, who can close their eyes and "imagine a string-straight, poplar-lined Route Nationale in France on a summer's day. That growing dot in the middle dis tance is a sky-blue Bugatti coupe, rasping down from Paris to Nice at no miles an hour...