Molsheim Motor Cars Molsheim II

With more than a little irony, given how this is being written as a newsletter, I am terrific at sending emails, but terrible at replying to them.

During Car of the Day’s first run more than 10 years ago, I had a submission come in on October 5, 2015 from a reader named Richard W. for this car, the Molsheim II. He said this of his first-hand account with the car:

“The Molsheim II, a near exact replica of a Bugatti Type 35B, with a turbo Ford engine and semiautomatic transmission. I rode in one once when I was a kid, back in the mid 70's. They were beautifully made, with many interchangeable parts with the original Bugatti. As I recall, the company was funded by a wealthy doctor from Pasadena, California, and only one or two were completed. I believe they exhibited at the LA Auto Show in the mid ’70s.”

Well, here’s where my brain splits. On one hand, it has taken me nearly ten years to come good on Richard’s suggestion for a car, his email embarrassingly still unreplied to. (Yes, I am sending this story to him directly in the hopes it arrives as a pleasant surprise!)

On the other hand, information on the Molsheim II hasn’t progressed much beyond what Richard had sent me all those years ago. As it happens, other car sleuths / snobs were poking around, asking for information on this Bugatti Type 35B ‘replica’. 

Nobody has yet reported this fact: the Molsheim II’s engine ran on propane, making it the first such barbecue gas car here at Car of the Day.

Notably, a German reporter at Zwischengas asked their readers about the car, after mentioning that the replica had been featured in the November 1975 issue of Road & Track magazine.

This gave me the idea to post about it on social media, in the hopes one of my followers would have more information; specifically, that 1975 issue of R&T. 

Within minutes, Chris Tonn, a talented writer / photographer in Ohio — who is very much looking for work at present, go hire him — replied, sending me a few photos of the original 1975 road test of this Bugatti replica car. A thousand thank-yous.

In addition to the road test, I have located original sales documentation for the car (see below), and can tell you that the Molsheim II is more authentic a Bugatti, if this matters to you, than the actual, slightly smaller Type 35 replicas that Bugatti currently does sell. 

In the ’70s, when U.S. enthusiasts sought to recapture the experience of driving a vintage racing car, the thought of a fallen legend such as Bugatti building its own replicas of a 1930s Grand Prix car would have been blasphemous.

Sooooo I can’t be too upset at Molsheim Motor Cars for doing the hard work and actually building the damn thing — on an original chassis design, no less!

Really, much of the car’s visual success comes from it using replica parts that were manufactured in the UK in the ’70s. 

Road & Track reported that all of its body panels, wheel castings, tires, steering wheel, radiator, torque reaction rods, and body screws are replica parts, parts that could be used on actual Type 35 models.

Don’t believe this means the car wasn’t modernized. Its wheels (based on the later Bugatti Type 51’s stronger castings), for example, were updated by Molsheim Motor Cars to use disc brakes.

Road & Track also reported, usefully, on the car’s updated front suspension design, in reference to the original’s:

“The front axle [of the Bugatti Type 35B] was most ingenious. It was a hollow tube in one piece with different inside and outside diameters at the center and at the ends with the semi-elliptic springs passing through the tube. One sometimes wonders if Ettore Bugatti didn’t think up these little engineering niceties just so he could solve the problem of how to make them.

“In the Molsheim II the springs pass under the axle and are secured by U-bolts, otherwise the suspension is the same, and even the friction shock absorbers are similar to the Bugatti design. The rear suspension of both cars is the same with reversed quarter-elliptic springs.”

Unfortunately, the car lacked the genius of a Bugatti mechanic to set it all up, as the finished replica had, according to R&T, a high degree of negative camber that meant the Molsheim II was sketchy at best.

In addition, it was very hot in testing, with the (added) electric engine fan pushing warm current into the cabin.

Nobody has yet reported this fact: the Molsheim II’s engine ran on propane, making it the first such barbecue gas car here at Car of the Day.

Its motivation came, indeed, from a 1,993cc 4-cylinder Ford Pinto engine, then modified by the legendary Ak Miller with an Air Research turbocharger for an estimated 185 bhp and 340 lb-ft of torque, mated to a 3-speed torque converter automatic transmission. 

The propane part is so the engine was able to meet emissions standards of the time, well played.

Its 1/4-mile time is listed as 15.9 seconds for this 1,850-lb Grand Prix replica — not bad at all for the era.

How many of the Molsheim II models were produced? Despite the company’s claim they’d build to the owner’s exact specifications, no more than two are believed to have been built.

Unlike nine years ago, however, I’m leaving this article totally free to read without a paywall — in the hopes a real Molsheim II car and / or owner drops by and adds the next chapter to this saga.