A current of art flows through the whole history of the Bugatti marque in the first decades of the 20th century. It reached its high watermark in the 57S super-sports car of the late 1930s.

Most of the greatest car-makers of that earliest automotive age – Charles Rolls, W.O. Bentley and August Duesenberg among them – were fired up by the prospect of overcoming knotty engineering problems. By contrast, Ettore Bugatti, founder of the house of that name, had art running in his veins and he applied it to everything he created – from surgical instruments and table cutlery to some of the most glorious cars of the age.

Born in Milan in 1881, Ettore was the son of Carlo, one of Italy’s leading designers of furniture and jewellery. Ettore’s grandfather had been an architect and sculptor. His aunt was married to the painter Giovanni Segantini. His brother became a sculptor. We can, therefore, be reasonably certain that when conversation in the Bugatti family household turned to the horseless carriages that were then making their earliest appearance in the world, arguments about spark plugs and valve clearances would not have predominated.

Those punters were, however, suffering unusual privations in the royal purse. Just at the moment the Royale made its shimmering debut appearance in the spotlight, the world economy took its steepest-ever nosedive. The Great Depression wiped out not just Wall Street stockbrokers but also crowned heads all over Europe. Of the 25 cars Ettore had planned to build, seven were constructed and only three were sold.

Ettore didn’t do himself any commercial favours in his approach to customer relations. He refused to sell a Royale to one king because he was affronted by that sovereign’s table manners. To another customer, who complained that he found his Type 35 difficult to start on chilly mornings, Bugatti barked “Surely a man who can afford a Type 35 can afford a heated garage?”

Deportment at table mattered so much to Ettore that he designed his own cutlery. Its abiding beauty and functionality are matched by the surgical instruments he also designed, still used by some medical departments.

Punctilious in all things, he was dissatisfied with the terriers he bought, so he started breeding his own. Irked by the appearance and performance of trains in Molsheim, he knocked some out to his own design.

In 1934, Automobiles E. Bugatti underwent a decisive shift when Jean, Ettore’s son, became the company’s leader and driving force. One of his first creations was the two-seater Type 57, which became the most fabulous road-going Bugatti of all. The world land-speed record-holder Sir Malcolm Campbell said of the Type 57: “If I was asked to give my opinion as to the best all-round super-sports car on the market today, I should say, without any hesitation whatever, it was the Type 57 Bugatti.”

Originally fitted with a smaller version of the Royale’s flat-bottomed horseshoe grille, the Type 57’s swooping lines – like a swallow in flight – set the model that Jaguar, Bentley and Mercedes laboured to follow. With a 3.3-litre dual overhead camshaft straight eight-cylinder engine, the Type 57 was astoundingly fast. Jean drove one the 475km from Molsheim to Paris in 3 hours and 55 minutes. Google Maps gives that journey time today, on modern roads, as 4 hours 47 minutes.

The pinnacle of Type 57 production – which continued until 1939 – was the Type 57S, which is the car offered by Bonhams at the Amelia Island auction in March.

The ‘S’ stood for surbaissé or ‘lowered’. A shorter wheelbase, with the rear axle passing through the frame, made the Type 57S virtually a Grand Prix car in touring car guise. To mark it out further from the standard Type 57, the S had a V-shaped radiator. When Bugatti thumbed their noses at Bentley and added a supercharger, the Type 57S became the fastest road-going car in the world – with not a trace of lorry in its being.

A mere 48 Type 57S chassis were built before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. Rarest of the rare, a tiny handful were handed over to outside coachbuilders. They included chassis number 57541, the one that is offered here, which went in 1937 to Carrosserie Van den Plas, who gave it a four-seat touring body.

Given a comprehensive restoration by its latest owner – including fitting original Molsheim fasteners and hardware, and giving the sunroof its original black cotton top – this 57541 can now legitimately be regarded as unsurpassed among works of automotive art in the 20th century.

Neil Lyndon is a writer and journalist.