Car passion as heritage: what really gets passed on
Automotive passion can’t be taught. It has to be shown. Antoine Dufilho didn’t learn to love cars from a book: he grew up in the world of his great-uncle Jacques, actor, painter and sculptor, and Bugatti collector. It wasn’t a lesson. It was a presence. A way of inhabiting things.
No one told him it was beautiful. He just saw it. And he hasn’t forgotten it since.
A family passion for cars
The link between Dufilho and Bugatti
The Dufilho name is linked to the Bugatti brand by several generations. Antoine’s great-uncle Jacques had the good fortune to collect Bugattis. This passion was passed on to his nephew, and then naturally to Antoine.
This love of Bugatti, combined with an artistic vision of the automobile, is what led Antoine Dufilho to create his first sculptures. He got his start by working with aluminum to sculpt a Bugatti, which was one of the jewels in his great-uncle’s garage. The first work dates from 2011. The second, the Bugatti Atlantic, inaugurates in 2012 a sculpture made of solids and voids with an apparent structure. The visual grammar that would define all his work was beginning to be written.
A journey built around the automobile and art
Antoine Dufilho’s passion for cars is just one of the threads in his story. His background tells a much longer story: medical studies first, to learn rigor and understand human mechanics. He then went on to the Lille School of Architecture and Landscape Design, where he developed a new approach to sculpture, a fascination for working with frameworks that, once laid bare, reveal a succession of solids and voids.
He then built his own studio in the countryside around Lille, using shipping containers. It is in this space that he has since created all his works, experimenting with welding and molding, gradually building up the aesthetics of his art. Technically self-taught, he is now represented in over 40 galleries and exhibits in France and abroad.
Passing on a passion for cars: what it really means
The transmission of a motoring passion has nothing to do with demonstration. It’s about the intensity someone puts into what they’re doing, and the attention it arouses in those watching.
What Jacques Dufilho passed on was not just a taste for Bugatti. It was a way of being attentive to shapes, to materials, to what is made with care. This attention is not lost. It’s transformed. It becomes architecture. Sculpture. A workshop built with his own hands deep in the Lille countryside.
This is how great passions work. They can’t be taught. They’re lived in front of others.
Cars we sculpt and cars we drive
There are two categories of car in the life of an enthusiast. Those that belong to history, heritage and art. And those of everyday life.
Ferrari 250 GTOs, 70s Porsches, Bugatti Type 35s: Antoine Dufilho treats them like works of art. He breaks them down into layers of metal, playing with light and emptiness. He doesn’t reproduce them. He captures what they exude. Their line of force. The emotion they provoke even before we know their name.
Outside the studio, life goes on. Exhibitions in Le Touquet, Paris, Megève, the French Grand Prix. Travelling between workshops, galleries and shows requires a vehicle that’s adapted to the job: spacious, reliable, with real loading capacity. For families and professionals covering long distances, the choice of a 7-seater car can change the quality of every journey.
When sculpture makes automobile passion accessible
Works in public spaces
Automotive sculpture is special in that it speaks to the uninitiated.
A visitor who doesn’t know a Ferrari from a Lamborghini can be moved by a sculpture several meters high in the public space. Not because they recognize the model, but because they feel something. The presence of the object. The quality of the care that went into making it. The fact that a car can be seen as something other than a means of transport.
This is how many visitors to Antoine Dufilho’s exhibitions become interested in the history of the models represented. Sculpture becomes an entrance. A doorway.
Red Racing Flower and La Dolce Vita at Le Touquet
In Le Touquet, two monumental works by Antoine Dufilho coexist in the public space, accessible to all without a ticket.
The Red Racing Flower, inspired by the Ferrari 330 P4 of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, measures 4.60 m long by 1.93 m wide and weighs 1.7 tons. It is composed of 100 red-lacquered aluminum slats, each at a different angle, which open like a flower. Permanently installed in front of the Westminster Hotel, it changes shape according to the viewer’s point of view. The static object appears to be in motion.
A few hundred metres away, La Dolce Vita has been on display since early December 2024. Inspired by Riva’s Aquarama, this monumental sculpture combines corten steel and mirror-polished stainless steel. The contrast between the two materials creates a depth that reinforces the elegance of the whole.
Two works, two materials, two eras of work by the same artist. And for those who pass by without knowing who created them, the same question arises: who did this, and why?
Agility and the centenary of the Bugatti Type 35
Agility illustrates another dimension of this transmission. Created for the centenary of the Bugatti Type 35, this monumental sculpture in bead-blasted stainless steel adopts an organic treatment never before used by Antoine Dufilho. The naturally arranged plates give the illusion that the car is in full motion, as if it had just come out of a race.
This is the first time the artist has created a sculpture in a posture that seems frozen in full acceleration. Those unfamiliar with the history of the Type 35 will feel the momentum first. The rest comes later.
Car passion as a common language
At each exhibition, generations cross paths. Collectors who have experienced live racing. Enthusiasts who grew up with posters and specialized magazines. Visitors discovering the models for the first time. All looking at the same sculptures, each with their own references.
Perhaps that’s the definition of an enduring automotive passion: something that continues to speak to those who come after, without the need for translation.
Jacques Dufilho probably didn’t set out to make Antoine a sculptor. He lived his passion in front of him, surrounded by his Bugatti. That was enough. Antoine Dufilho wrote the rest himself, in the countryside around Lille, with aluminum, stainless steel and years of work.
Photo: Eric Ceccarini.