What Are THEY Thinking: Would You Spend Over £200,000? On Something You Cannot Drive?

So, would you spend £228,000 pounds on what is essentially a piece of waterlogged car art?

Someone did.

When an ambitious buyer decided to purchase and import the outdated Type 22 Bugatti, the Swiss government threw down some serious import fees. At the time the owner believed it would be cheaper to push the car into a lake and forget it ever existed.

Recently recovered, auctioneers believed its top bid would not exceed £68,000 pounds. Little did they know they were £160,000 pounds off base.

Not as worthless as the original owner once thought!

Is this merely conspicuous consumption OR is this a brilliant piece of machinery?

Autocar reports:

"This Bugatti Type 22 has been sold at auction for £228,000 - despite spending the last 70 years under the surface of Lake Maggiore in northern Italy.

The car, which had a 30bhp 1.5-litre four-cylinder engine and an advanced multi-valve cylinder head, was first registered in 1925 in Paris, before being unofficially imported to Switzerland by a young architect

With the Swiss government demanding import duty..."