The factory at Molsheim had been established when Alsace was still part of the German Empire, a geographic ambiguity that would define the early years of the firm. Ettore Bugatti's father, Carlo Bugatti, was a noted Art Nouveau furniture and jewellery designer, and Ettore brought a similar concern for visual and tactile refinement to his automobiles. Engine blocks were hand-scraped to ensure surfaces were flat enough to seal without gaskets; safety wires were threaded through fasteners in intricate laced patterns; axles were forged so that springs passed through openings rather than being bolted on — details Bugatti described as solutions that required fewer parts and less weight. He famously dismissed Bentley's cars as "the world's fastest lorries" for their emphasis on brute durability over refinement.
After the First World War, Bugatti exhibited three cars at the October 1919 Paris Motor Show, all powered by a 1,368 cc overhead-camshaft four-cylinder engine with four valves per cylinder. These closely followed his prewar designs and established the postwar range: the Type 13 with a racing body, the Type 22, and the Type 23.
Racing was central to Bugatti's identity from the beginning. The small Type 10 swept the top four positions at its debut race. The 1924 Type 35, developed with engineer and racing driver Jean Chassagne who also drove it at its first Grand Prix in Lyon that year, became one of the most successful racing cars in history. Bugatti cars won the Targa Florio for five consecutive years from 1925 through 1929, an unmatched run of success in that demanding Sicilian road race. In 1929, a privately entered Bugatti won the inaugural Monaco Grand Prix.
Louis Chiron achieved more podium finishes in Bugatti cars than any other driver of the period; the modern Bugatti revival acknowledged this by naming the 1999 Bugatti 18/3 Chiron concept in his honour. The racing programme's final peak came at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where Jean-Pierre Wimille and Robert Benoist won in 1937, and Wimille returned with Pierre Veyron to win again in 1939 with a single car and limited resources.
The death of Ettore Bugatti's son Jean on 11 August 1939, while he was testing a Type 57 tank-bodied race car near the Molsheim factory, marked a turning point in the company's fortunes. When World War II began, Ettore was separated from his factory — Alsace fell under German occupation — and the Molsheim plant was eventually lost. Ettore planned a new factory in Levallois outside Paris and designed new models including the Type 73 road car and Type 73C single-seater racer, but only five examples of the Type 73 were built before his death on 21 August 1947.
With Ettore gone and Jean already dead, there was no successor capable of sustaining the marque. The company made its last Paris Motor Show appearance in 1952 and ceased operations entirely that year, having produced no more than approximately 8,000 cars across its entire prewar history.
Bugatti's prewar cars were known equally for their performance and their craftsmanship. Exposed surfaces in the engine compartment were given guilloché finishes. The company's guiding principle, as expressed by Ettore himself, was that "weight was the enemy" — a philosophy that produced light, nimble cars competitive against rivals with larger engines. The Type 35 in particular demonstrated that a well-sorted small-displacement car with fine handling could beat more powerful machines, and it remained competitive throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s.