Few men in the history of a technology, a company or a sport managed to exceed the scope of their speciality to enter History. The automobile world knew a handful of extraordinary men and personalities. ETTORE BUGATTI and GABRIEL VOISIN were of those men : two unlike characters sharing the same passion.

   Their duel, at the A.C.F. Grand Prix, gave to that sporting season a technical and human dimension which almost overshadowed the fantastic concentration of work and creativity contributed by the manufacturers. All energies in the whole Touraine were mobilized for months on end before this 1923 Grand Prix, one of the turning-points in the history of car racing.

  An eccentric, short-tempered and solitary man, Gabriel VOISIN (1880, February 5th - 1973, December 25th) refused any compromising. In 1922, he entered the motor vehicle competition and won the Grand Prix de Tourisme de Strazbourg.
And just when everyone expected him to do the same in 1923, he decided to take part in the most prestigious discipline : The Speed Grand prix, with the constant and unconscious will to astonish. In six months, he created an unprecedented car with André LEFEVRE who was to become one of the fathers of the Citroen front-wheel drive "traction".

   Ettore BUGATTI (1880, 15th September - 1947, 21st August) was born in a family of artists. He created all his automobiles with an almost finicky concern for beauty, up to the limits of paradox.
Indeed, this "TANK" of 1923 is not beautiful in the cold eyes of the critic, but it radiates a mathematical beauty from an occult and implacable logic.