Friday 11th August 1939

While testing the Type 57 tank-bodied racer which had just won a Le Mans race, not far from the factory on the road near the village of Duppigheim (France), 30-year-old Jean Bugatti was killed. He lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a tree while trying to avoid a drunken bicyclist and was interred in the Bugatti family plot at the municipal cemetery in Dorlisheim. There is a monument to him at the site of the accident.