Bugatti Type 57 Stelvio

The odometer drive housing of a 1935 Bugatti Type 57S Stelvio came to us with its casing burst apart and the gears inside broken and heavily worn. The client wanted it returned exactly as it was, the original made again, every feature intact.

The housing was measured in full, laser scanned and reverse engineered, then rebuilt as a complete 3D model. Every surface, every thread and every gear tooth, down to the gear module and the housing dimensions, was calculated from what remained of the original.

From that model our manufacturing partner produced the component, through a combination of gear hobbing, CNC milling and turning. The gears were then hardened. Everything was drawn again and made again, from the bronze nuts and plugs to the lock screws and the gears, each carrying the exact features of the original. Even the threads follow Bugatti's own thread specification, cut exactly as on the original.

The challenge was working from damaged originals with no surviving drawings. Every measurement had to be interpreted, cross-referenced and translated into geometry that could be manufactured to modern tolerances while remaining true to the original design. The materials chosen reflect what is available today rather than what was available in the 1930s, but the specification, the geometry and the function are exactly as Bugatti intended.

The result is a housing made entirely anew that holds every detail of the one before it.