a BUGATTI in the PRESIDIO

...we're not in Paris any more

Aug 05, 2024

photographs by Paul G Ryan

My good friend, English writer Charles Fox was always persuasive in talking owners of exotic cars into letting him have them for a day or so. He usually promised them an article in Car and Driver Magazine. I came along to take the photographs.

This time it was a 1924 Bugatti Type 35, a French race car of the sort that ruled European motor racing in the 1920s. It was faster than the Italians and English back then

But today it blew out while exhaust smoke all along Van Ness Avenue and beside the restaurants and hotels of Lombard Street. It did not fit in. It was not appreciated.

Charles, who always had a not very subtle frustrated desire to be a race car driver suggested we head for the Presidio – the nearby retired Army Post that had secluded narrow roads and camouflaging trees. We didn’t want to attract attention. I followed in my Volkswagen.

The turn into The Presidio from Arguello Street in upscale Pacific Heights is a visual transition.

Three story urban mansions of brick give way to looming Eucalyptus, pine and cypress trees, and an occasional redwood. They were planted a century ago by the Army who wanted visual isolation for their military installation. To hide from outside eyes. This was what we wanted today. And there was silence.

We stopped at the top of a small rise where we could see the Golden Gate bridge and a few of the Spanish adobe buildings that once housed soldiers in the Mexican American war. Charles thought the Bugatti would feel at home here.

We sat there amongst the trees for a while, caught upon each other’s lives, and ate the Italian sandwiches we had brought from North Beach.

Charles told tall tales of when he rode with Graham Hill, the English Formula One champion, on the Silverstone Circuit.

Jason and I had a Negro Modulo beer, . Charles didn’t.

I wandered the roads and into the trees looking for a good vantage point. A good photographing position but one safe from the possibility of Charles’ making an errant Bugatti turn. He was known for that. Once in Baja California, with me, he put our race car off the road, into the sand, ran over a cactus into a ditch and bent the front axle. We were stranded for a couple hours.

The tall trunked Eucalyptus defined a giant slalom-like route for the Bugatti.

There were occasional dirt road diversions where we could test the capability of the 85 year old car. Or at least Charles’ capability of maneuvering it.

To get images that would convey the feeling of motion I knew I had to shoot from in the Bugatti while it was moving. It was a two seated car, probably for a mechanic for mechanical breakdowns in those early races

Of course there were no seat belts, no helmets and an open top. Charles had a way of pushing the limits of reality, sometimes just for the exhuberence of it, usually accompanied by maniacal laughter that could be concerning, now that we were now on dirt roads that this car was not designed for.

Although Charles hadn’t listened to my calls for caution, we made it through with only some residual mud on the car.

It was a good day in The Presidio. We drove through the woods and Jason had his Bugatti still intact. He had a relieved smile for the rest of the afternoon.