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Nicola Bulgari's car passion is only eclipsed by his love of people
Americans have an inferiority complex,” says Nicola Bulgari, an insatiable classic American car collector. “The Europeans scowl at American cars. Americans revere German engineering but they don’t know about their own engineering. It’s ridiculous, come on.”
So Bulgari is particularly fond of cars that descended from David Dunbar Buick’s original company, an archetypal American brand. Although there is a single Bentley in Nicola Bulgari’s 20,000 square-foot garage in Pennsylvania, “…his blood is all-American,” says long-time advisor Marty Schorr. “He believes America put the world on the road in cars.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t understand European cars,” says Bulgari. “I was born in Europe. If you look at the BMW and Mercedes, I’m fed up to see the same old thing. Where is the inventiveness, the styling? Their design is so pretentiously stodgy, they have no flair, nothing. Their over-engineering, who needs it? It’s useless.”
Of course, Bulgari doesn’t believe all European cars are over-engineered, especially classics: “I have an Alfa in Europe, not a mundane Alfa, none of them were ever mundane. Its production was only 400, which is ridiculously low by American standards, but the fact is it is a very delicate car. It is a 2.3-liter sedan, a lovely car but very delicate. I had a problem with the cylinder head. For an incredible price I finally fixed it, but how long it will last I don’t know. When you start them you warm them up for half an hour otherwise they won’t go.”
The 50 cars in Bulgari’s recently completed Pennsylvania garage are tributes mostly to the classic Americans, with some modern examples that he likes mixed in: He has a special fondness for General Motors classics, but also has a 1934 5-window Ford coupe hot rod and a recent Ford GT. He has 18 pristine Buicks in his garage — but he has one of everything of the “average American’s dream cars”, which he sees as Chryslers, Hudsons, Oldsmobiles, Cadillacs, Plymouths, Nashes and Packards. Duesenbergs and cost-no-object hand-builts don’t appeal to him as much as well-built production-line cars. They are almost all old cars. “With all respect to those new cars we love so much, in the end they are all the same, very predictable,” he notes. “They’re fast, they corner better, and they’re air conditioned. Even the finest are just people-movers in the end, because you expect them to do this after 60 years of development. They corner better; they stop better. The engineering has improved but the charm has not improved.”
Bulgari, now 67, respects a lot of European cars up to a certain point, his American friends say. “Ferraris up to Daytonas are works of art,” relates Schorr. He respects Porsche’s racing success, for another example. “But he doesn’t understand why people pay so much for new ones. He thinks dollar-for-dollar people should buy Corvettes, not Porsches.” Even though Bulgari respects his older brother Gianni’s racing success in European sports cars, he has no desire to own any.
The most ostentatious of Bulgari’s U.S. collection is a trim 1931 Imperial LeBaron, which Bulgari has admitted drives more roughly than Duesenbergs and Packards, and he feels that the serious historical cars he’s owned, including American iron belonging to past Popes, as well as the right-hand-drive Buick purchased in 1936 by the newly crowned King Edward VIII, should not reside in his collection. He gave them up to museums.
He drives all of his cars, but not alone. “Cars are wonderful but I prefer people. I love to share these cars with people; it’s an experience to share. You drive these old cars in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania, you drive them in the dusk and just after it rains, and it’s priceless, it’s a fantastic experience. I was five when I first fell in love with cars. Is that young enough?” he asks. Bulgari’s first car was a 1934 Fiat 508 Mille Miglia. “That’s the car that really made Italians into motorists.” As Bulgari was growing up near Rome, he remembered that the truly important people in Europe, pre-World War II, drove Lincolns, Cadillacs and Packards, not Mercedes. “The cars had these incredible grilles,” which fascinated Bulgari, adds Schorr. It wasn’t just the chrome ornamentation that interested Bulgari, however. In the 1950s Bulgari toured the U.S. with his parents, and became a fan of American culture. “His collection is not a hobby about cars, it’s a hobby about people,” explains Schorr. “He will pick up the phone two years from now and continue a conver sation he started with you about a certain car; he never forgets anything.” He has no particular favorite car or marque. “They are all my favorites. I enjoy each one for what they are and what they give me. Compare cars that are the same year in this country, and understand how hard that must have been with the competition. The year 1941 was a fundamental year. Before the war. I mean these cars were spectacular, the design and the engineering. Everything.”
He’s particularly proud of a final example of one Roadmaster, which is painted white and had its hood signed by GM designer Wayne Cady. That hood hangs on the wall of his garage in Rome, a large building that was a former VW dealership.
A 12-foot wide poster in one of the Bulgari’s Pennsylvania restoration shops, adjacent to the large Allentown garage, reads: “Europeans don’t understand American cars.” It is a poster from a Concours that Bulgari hosted, although he’s known not to be an attention-seeker, so the poster with his name is a rare item.
Bulgari has plans for his nine-acre Pennsylvania site that includes a second, larger 24,000-square-foot garage, along with ponds, walking paths and a palladium-like arena for displaying to friends and fans the best-made cars of their time. “I never thought of designing my own car,” says the world-renown jewelry designer, “I’m afraid of being presumptuous. We do have some nice jewelry, though.” Bulgari plays an active role in his Rome-based family-run jewelry and watch company (spelled BVLGARI) which grossed almost $1 billion in 2005.
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