The Bugatti EB110 Remastered According to Khyzyl Saleem

You may know him as the guy who penned the TWR’s V12 Super-GT ‘Supercat’, or maybe you know him simply as @the_kyza on Instagram, but if you don’t know Khyzyl Saleem then you should start paying attention. Now, the Kyza has focused on the Bugatti EB110 and we wonder if it’s most impressive design yet.

Okay, “most impressive” is a superlative and you may wonder if we’re simply just being dramatic, but i’d say we’re not. You can look back through his back catalogue on Instagram or Facebook and you’ll find some incredibly interesting work. Even still… that EB110 is no joke.

Saleem began his design career in video games, and once you know that you’ll probably note the GCI tech-focused style of his lines. He’s exceptionally talented at 3-D rendering, which is why these images may look like the real thing even though they only exist in pixels or his imagination.

Yes, he ventured into the realm of the TWR remastered Jaguar XJ-S and he’s also designed bodykits and the like for actual production, but most of Khyzyl’s work is in the virtual world. That’s where this ’90s era Bugatti supercar icon comes into play.

The Bugatti EB110 Backstory

In the period prior to acquisition by Volkswagen, Bugatti found itself owned by Italian car dealer magnate Romano Artioli who acquired the brand and began producing the extremely inventive Bugatti EB110 out of a state-of-the-art new factory he’d had constructed in the heart of Italy’s so-called “motor valley” where seemingly everyone who’s anyone in Italian supercars builds and often designs their cars.

Yes, for those keeping track, Bugatti was a French brand no matter how Italian-sounding the name. The EB110 was brilliant, the even more extreme EB110 SS was even more so. However, as Artioli moved to acquire Lotus as well (and name its first Artioli-era product after his daughter Elise), his company ran on hard times and assets sold off. EB110 production ceased, and they remain exceedingly rare.

Bugatti, as we know, ended up in the hands of Volkswagen. In theory, it may have been a move of one-upmanship with VW’s chairman Ferdinand Piëch making a grab on the distressed marque following chess game that had been the acquisition of Rolls-Royce where only Bentley and the factory in Crewe were actually acquired and the Rolls-Royce car brand ended up in the hands of BMW.

Perhaps with the goal of one-upping the Rolls-Royce brand for the title of most opulent auto marque, Piëch leaned into the luxurious side of the Bugatti brand. Prior to World War 2, Bugatti had produced the most incredible cars such as the Royale series and the Atlantic. Several concept cars including a Giugiaro-penned sedan gave way to the first Piëch era Bugatti – the Veyron. And though the Veyron and its predecessors have been sportscars, their focus on the most outrageous luxury and top speed have always been priorities. That the EB110 had been more of a performance supercar, not to mention a rad-era-wedge that was a bit more extreme than the current ultra-luxury Bugattis has helped it retain enthusiast bucket list status.

Even still, the EB110 is a 90s era car, meaning it’s dated in many ways no matter how cool it is. Reintroducing it via the magical world of the modern remasters, something Kyza knows something about, is a very interesting consideration.

So sure, while even acquiring a Bugatti EB110 takes a serious financial commitment and they are incredibly rare, we do live in a world where people Canepa does remaster the Group B era homologation special Porsche 959, and Callum even remasters Jaguars so exclusive that only a few were built for a James Bond movie. In such conditions, the idea of too expensive to remaster seems to have gone out the window… at least until the next major economic downturn.

In that vein, we can’t stop looking at what Kyza calls the EB110-K. According to Khyzyl Saleem, it’s “a slight re-imagining of the EB110 that I had started to create ahead of Ultrace, which I decided to continue with and push further to create something a bit newer, bolder & slightly more…modern, but with its original flare still ever present. 

“I was quite fascinated digging into the history of the EB110, especially its design prototypes, which proved to be great inspiration for this evolution of the original, which I’m sure many will still prefer the OG, but I wanted to just have fun with it & create something different.”

Obviously it’s spectacular. It gets even more spectacular when you consider a further evolution that he shared a day later – the EB110-K Aero. I believe Longtails have nothing on the Aero, inspired by historical references like the Bugatti Atlantic or the Aerolithe designed by Bendini. Nobody does wheel spats anymore, but perhaps they should and likely it is Bugatti who could or should pull it off.

It does make you wonder who on earth could pull off the actual building of such a car. Given the niche boutique nature of the Bugatti factory itself, or the out-of-the-box thinking of people such as Mate Rimac who now runs that company, you have to wonder if creative reuse of EB110s shouldn’t be another consideration for the brand as it finds itself moving forward in today’s automotive industry ecosystem.

Okay, we’ve waxed on enough about this car. Part of it is trying to figure where Kyza could go with such a design. Part of it is just going long so we have more room to embed more of his amazing renderings. Whatever the case, Khyzyl Saleem has created something incredibly cool and even though you can’t buy it we wanted to share it.