Bugatti EB110 SS

Unveiled at the 1992 Geneva Motor Show, roughly a year after the base GT, the SS reworked the same 3.5-litre quad-turbo V12 with a reprogrammed ECU, larger injectors, and a freer-flowing exhaust, and shed real weight through it. It was, briefly, the fastest production car in the world, and remains the version of the EB110 collectors and enthusiasts point to first.

The EB110 SS was not a trim package. It carried a meaningfully reprogrammed engine and a real weight reduction over the GT, built at Bugatti's own new factory in Campogalliano, Italy, purpose-built for the project. It represented Bugatti's entire modern relaunch pushed to its sharpest possible expression, arriving at a moment when the marque had been dormant for decades.

Engineer Paolo Stanzani, who worked on the project, described the episode directly: "Artioli was not happy with Gandini's design proposals. He kept saying that we were trying to do another Lamborghini, so he brought in his cousin Giampaolo Benedini." Benedini softened Gandini's sharper, more angular lines into the production EB110's more rounded, distinctively Bugatti-flavoured shape. The SS carries the same body as the GT, with additional aerodynamic detailing rather than a reworked silhouette.

Nicola Materazzi, credited as the EB110's Production Chief Engineer, led the technical programme responsible for the carbon chassis, engine reliability, and the all-wheel-drive torque split, following directly on from his earlier work on the Lancia Stratos HF, Ferrari 288 GTO, and Ferrari F40, all catalogued elsewhere on this site. The SS's own changes were concentrated in the powertrain and mass reduction rather than the chassis architecture itself, which the GT had already established.

This is a real, directly documented design controversy, not a matter of interpretation. Engineer Paolo Stanzani's own account states plainly that Artioli felt Gandini's proposal looked too much like another Lamborghini and brought in Benedini specifically to move away from that look.