Bugatti restoration expert Scott Sargent started out on his mechanical career, at age 6, when his dad gave him an old Briggs & Stratton lawnmower to tinker with, and he got it running

“It had no blade and the motor wasn’t running. I took it apart with his help and figured out it had a stuck valve in it. Then I got it back together, tied a rope on it, and pulled—and the thing started. That was just amazing. That was kind of an awakening for me, bringing that engine to life.” says Sargent

His father was an enthusiastic collector of antique Fords who often took him and his brothers on outings to rescue another down-and-out vehicle. When Sargent was in fifth grade, his dad gave him a derelict two-door 1930 Ford Model A to tinker with.

“I worked on it for a few years and eventually made a doodlebug out of it—basically a big open go-kart. We could drive it around the field next to our house. But it was the history of the car that fascinated me as much as the mechanical issues, the fact that I could go to a book and see a picture of what it looked like when it was delivered.”

During high school, Sargent bought and restored a 1934 Ford pickup truck with money he’d earned from delivering newspapers and mowing lawns. He also started working part-time for David Patridge, a classic car restorer in Rumney, New Hampshire. After getting a business degree at the University of Arizona—paid for with earnings from a small auto shop he opened in Tucson while an undergrad—he made his way back to Vermont.

A visitor to his Bradford, Vermont shop in the early 1990s changed his trajectory. Peter Williamson, a noted Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center neurologist, avid car collector, and past president of the American Bugatti Club, who lived in nearby Lyme, New Hampshire, stopped in to invite him to see his 14 prewar Bugattis. At the time, it was one of the most significant private collections in the world.

two Type 57SC Atlantic, which many consider the ultimate Bugatti, survive. One of them was in Williamson’s garage the day Sargent went to visit. (Ralph Lauren owns the other.)

Though the physician had purchased the Atlantic in a Los Angeles auction in 1971 for $59,000, setting a record for the highest price ever paid for a car, it had come with a host of inauthentic parts and incorrect cosmetics. In 2000, Williamson asked Sargent to do a full restoration of his crown jewel.

When the Atlantic’s exacting overhaul was complete in 2003, Williamson entered it into the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, where it won Best in Show. After Williamson died in 2008, his estate sold the Atlantic for more than $30 million to Rob Walton, heir to the Walmart fortune.

the shop's parts runner

https://newengland.com/yankee/magazine/vermont-bugatti-restoration-expert-scott-sargent/