Acceleration is brisk – this 95-year-old car will still do the ton and the high gearing gives a 70mph cruise

It's a stupid hat, I know, but stupid in a good way – it always raises a smile. I first wore it when editor Coucher and I did the 2007 Mille Miglia in a Triumph TR3, and it went down a storm. I’ll never forget sitting in a typically Italian traffic jam next to a hatchback being driven by a typically gorgeous young Italian female who was wearing a typically Italian sullen pout. ‘Show her the hat!’ whispered the ed, and seconds later the pout was replaced by a brilliant smile. Chaps, if you want to charm the ladies in Italy, what you need is a tweedy deerstalker-type thing with flaps.

It also does a damn good job of keeping your head warm, which is more to the point when you’re driving a vintage open car in the depths of a British winter. Chilly ears are an unwelcome distraction, especially when the car in question is as challenging as the 1913 Bugatti known as Black Bess. The owner’s insurance valuation of ‘oh, round about a million’ underlines in a casual but very effective way just how rare and significant a car it is.

This isn’t just any old Bugatti, if such a thing exists. No-one knows for sure how many of these five-litre, chain-drive Edwardian supercars were built, but best guess is that you could count them on the fingers of both hands. Today there are three left. One is in the Schlumpf Collection, while another was recreated from a pile of mostly original parts in the 1970s and is privately owned. The third is Black Bess, an outstanding survivor with a continuous and well-documented history since new. And what a history – it would fill a book.

In fact, it already has. Legendary journalist Bill Boddy published a book about Black Bess in 1993. His own history with the car goes back to 1933, when he discovered her lying neglected in a works in Derby, and he was directly responsible for her being rescued and restored. Since then she’s led an active and visible life in the hands of a few key Bugatti enthusiasts – she was even chosen to counterpoint the Bugatti EB110 at the latter’s Paris launch in 1992 – but her early history is particularly fascinating.

Ettore Bugatti was barely out of his 20s when he created Black Bess and her sister cars, some time in the period 1908-1912. They were essentially road-racers, suitable for competition use or for fast cross-country road trips, unusual for Bugatti in that they had big four-cylinder engines and chain drive to the rear wheels. Seven are known to have been built, and two of those (one with shaft drive) went to America to take part in the Indianapolis 500.

The name Black Bess wasn’t bestowed until the 1920s and its recipient started life as the less romantic chassis number 474, Type 18 (or so some historians believe – the type number isn’t certain). But she certainly had a romantic first owner, being supplied new to the dashing French aviator Roland Garros. He was the archetypal magnificent man in his flying machine, having been the first to cross the Mediterranean in an aircraft, set a new altitude record and achieve various other flying-related feats. He took delivery of 474 in 1913, shortly before signing up for the air corps of the French Army in WW1.

Garros was shot down in April 1915 and spent three years in a prisoner-of-war camp, before escaping and returning to the front line in February 1918. In October, just a few weeks before the Armistice, he was shot down again, and killed. Ettore Bugatti later named one of his children after him.

After Garros’ death the car was sold to Louis Coatalen, chief engineer of Sunbeam. Coatalen’s specialism was engines, both car and aircraft, and he may have been intrigued by the Bugatti’s overhead camshaft and three valves per cylinder – two inlets and one exhaust. He certainly enjoyed it. Many years later, in 1945, he wrote in a letter to Black Bess’ then-owner: ‘During [the time] that car was in my possession I used it for running between London and Paris, and I had many delightful runs in that wonderful big four-cylinder car.’

Coatalen didn’t keep Black Bess very long, however. In 1922 or thereabouts she passed to a racy young lady called Miss Ivy Cummings, who had already been competing in a Bugatti Brescia and many other sporting cars in the speed trials and hillclimbs that were so popular in the early 1920s. She seems to have done well with the Type 18, regularly putting up competitive times against more modern machines; contemporary pictures show her throwing this old-timer around loose-surfaced corners in dramatic oversteery slides. She was also responsible for the nickname Black Bess, after the horse that highwayman Dick Turpin stole and supposedly rode from London to York in record time.

Miss Cummings’ fun was curtailed somewhat when the RAC banned speed events from public roads in 1925. She sold Black Bess to an Oxford undergraduate called LH Preston, who also raced the car quite a bit at Brooklands and elsewhere before selling her to someone else. This chap then went abroad, and a new buyer came forward in about 1932, a young actor called James Robertson Justice. Yes, that James Robertson Justice, who would later beome a stalwart of British comedy films such as the Doctor series and, appropriately, the vintage Bentley-starring The Fast Lady.

JRJ was a complete unknown at the time, and discovered that Black Bess needed work he couldn’t afford. So she sat, abandoned, in McEvoy’s works in Derby until Bill Boddy followed up a rumour that there was a strange Bugatti lurking there and wrote about her in the Bugatti Owners’ Club magazine Bugantics. This stirred up interest in the car and she was rescued by Colonel GM Giles, vice-president of the club and a serious Bugatti enthusiast – as was his brother Eric, who was president.

Col. Giles’ purchase of Black Bess on May 24, 1935, was the turning point in the old warhorse’s fortunes. He restored the car to a standard that was pretty unusual in pre-war days, spending a lot of money on having the body and mechanicals overhauled. He also paid for a hood, interior retrim, new windscreen and a set of electric lights.

That’s how Black Bess is presented today (minus the hood). For the past 20 years she’s been looked after by Bugatti specialist Ivan Dutton and his son Tim, and it’s Tim who’s on hand when Octane’s man rolls up for a test drive. It’s a busy day – a client is turning up for advice on how to get the best out of his Type 35 – so Tim suggests a quick demo of how to drive Black Bess, and then he’ll leave me to it.

O-o-kay, then…

Black Bess stands tall and proud but she’s not actually that big, with a short 8ft 4in wheelbase and skimpy rear Labourdette body. Climbing in and out is straightforward, thanks to the staggered seats that allow the driver to hurl the big steering wheel about without clouting his riding mechanic on the chin. You’re greeted by a wooden dash that’s well stocked with period Bugatti and Jaeger dials – and a few Dymo labels, an anachronism that reminds you this old racer has been regularly used throughout her life. There’s a big tachometer projecting from the dash, its face marked up to a lowly 3000rpm. As I’m about to find out, you’ll never get near that figure in normal driving.