When divers first glimpsed the curves of a pre-war Bugatti beneath the cold surface of Lake Maggiore in 1967, they assumed it was a rusted boat engine or an old pier structure. But as they brushed away the silt, the truth emerged in gleaming fragments: the unmistakable lines of a Bugatti Type 22 Brescia Roadster, a car built in 1925, worth a fortune even then, resting intact on the lakebed like a ghost frozen in time. It lay perfectly preserved, its wheels angled slightly as though parked in an invisible garage, a heavy chain still wrapped around the chassis.
Local fishermen swore the car had been down there since the 1930s. Older residents remembered a quiet scandal: a wealthy Parisian banker with rumored connections to criminal circles had vacationed along the lakefront. One day, his Bugatti disappeared. Days later, so did he. No body. No police reports with answers. Only stories traded in cafés, that the car had been driven directly into the lake as a warning, a demonstration of power, or a final message to a man who owed money to the wrong people. The lake kept the secret.
The car’s official history, uncovered decades later, only deepened the mystery. Registration documents traced it to a Paris-based banker named Adalbert Bodé, who had reportedly purchased the Bugatti before the rise of Nazi power. Bodé fled France in the 1930s under circumstances never clarified publicly. Italian authorities documented that he left the country abruptly, leaving behind unpaid customs fees. Normally, a vehicle in that situation would be seized and sold, but not this one. Instead, the Bugatti was disposed of in the most dramatic fashion possible: dragged across the lakefront and sunk.
Why? Several theories emerged. One story claimed Bodé had connections to organized crime in Paris and that the sinking was a message from enforcers. Another held that local authorities lacked secure impound facilities and opted to “dispose” of unpaid property by sinking it — an unlikely explanation, but one repeated by several older residents. A more disturbing theory suggested that the banker’s disappearance and the car’s fate were linked, and that the chain still bolted to the chassis was not originally intended for the Bugatti alone.
What was clear, however, was that for nearly eighty years, the lake acted as a natural vault. The freshwater preserved the car’s shape long after steel and aluminum should have corroded away. When the Bugatti was finally recovered in 2009, pulled from the water before it disintegrated entirely, crowds gathered along the lake’s edge to watch the ghost emerge. The frame crumbled as it touched air, the metal rotting instantly after decades of perfect stillness. But the form remained unmistakable: a pre-war masterpiece that should never have been abandoned.
The recovery prompted another peculiar chapter. Instead of being restored, the Bugatti was auctioned exactly as it came out of the lake, barnacled, skeletal, and breathtaking in its ruin. It sold for nearly $370,000 to a collector who vowed to preserve it as an artifact, not as a car. “It is more sculpture than machine now,” he said. “A relic of a story no one will ever fully know.”
Researchers tried again to trace Bodé’s fate. They found only fragments: financial documents showing abrupt liquidation, scattered references in police archives, and unverified allegations of debt to criminal groups operating between France and Italy. But no official record of his death exists. No surviving relative ever claimed the car. No paperwork explains why a luxury vehicle was chained and dumped rather than sold. The Bugatti remains the only witness to whatever happened in those lost years.
Today, what remains of the car sits preserved in its recovered condition, a twisted, lace-like skeleton of metal encased in memory. The Bugatti reads like a message from the past: a gangster’s warning, a bureaucratic disposal, or the silent partner to a disappearance never solved. Beneath the mud of Lake Maggiore, time held the story still. Above water, the questions come rushing back.
Editor’s Note: This article is based on documented recovery reports, verified registration records, auction data, and historical research into the Bodé case. Some narrative elements surrounding motives and organized-crime links reflect witness accounts and unproven local testimony due to incomplete archival documentation.
Sources & Further Reading:
– Lake Maggiore Bugatti recovery reports (2009)
– Italian Carabinieri historical notes on abandoned vehicle cases
– Pre-war Bugatti Type 22 registration documents linked to Adalbert Bodé
– Auction records from Bonhams (2009 Bugatti sale)
– Local oral histories and press coverage from the Verbania region
(One of many stories shared by Headcount Coffee — where mystery, history, and late-night reading meet.)
