“A technical product is not perfect until it is aesthetically impeccable as well,” Ettore Bugatti once said. And the company founder applied this standard not just to his own automobiles but to other everyday items too. If he was not satisfied with something he had bought, he often improved it or decided to produce his own version of it. The following small selection of examples demonstrates just how wide-ranging his inventive talent was.
The henhouse
Ettore Bugatti loved pasta more than anything and always had it freshly prepared by an Italian cook. For this h needed chicken eggs. When he went out to get some one day, he returned in an angry state without having purchased a single egg: the prices had gone up yet again. He then decided to keep chickens himself and set up his own little chicken farm. He designed the henhouse with wheels so that he could move it around his large grounds. Of course, the investment required meant that the eggs were subsequently much more expensive than if he had bought them individually. But at least they were fresh and he was no longer dependent on the farmers.
