Maserati 151 with 427 Ford

004's record according to Bollee/Oosthoek Maserati Tipo 151 ,
1962 Le Mans retired after 12 hours running as high as 2nd
1962 Road America retired after 90 of 125 laps running 3rd
1962 Riverside with 5.7 engine finished 11th
1963 Daytona practice , Ford 7.0 engine destroyed in accident

, it was crashed at Daytona in 1963 with Marvin Panch driving.

All I remember reading is that Marvin Paunch (sp?) drove it and it flipped
and he had to be pulled out of it.
I was wondering if it flipped at speed, if the aerodynamics of the car (sort of a Ferrari breadvan shape) had anything to do with it losing control?
Where did the 427 come from--Holman & Moody?
Was it a side oiler like the Cobra?
Was it iron blocks and iron head or at least an aluminum set of heads?
What about Webers?
Was it connected to a four speed from the U.S.?
Did Cunningham order this car to be built/retrofitted?

I always thought this car gave Shelby the idea of making a 427 powered Daytona but there isn't much in the magazines about this car and why it was built.

 

Most of your questions are related to the US-V8-engine.
I am no expert on this so -unfortunately- I can`t help here.

 

Neither can I help about US engines however the cause of the crash has always been known, it was torque steer: the big 7 liter V8 caused the car to pull hard to one side under braking and hard to the other side under acceleration. Panch had been warned about this by another driver who tried the car just before but still he lost control, rolled and was pulled out of the burning wreck seconds before it exploded.

Cunningham was disillusioned after Le Mans 62, did not feel it worth returning the following year even though these cars were made specifically for LM. Stuck with them he told Alfredo Momo to shoehorn a big US V8 in 004, one of his two cars to see what could come out of it, it was legal to do so in US racing and they had nothing to lose.

Not sure what gearbox it had.

There is no doubt that the cause of the crash was this torque steer.

It was fabulous to see 006, the only one of the three remaining race at Goodwood in September.

Hope this helps,

best regards,

Marc

 

So, what became of this car????

I ask because I saw this car in a well-known sportscar shop San Jose CA just a couple of years later.

At the time it had a poorly designed fiberglass front end replicating the original, and the rest of the car was looked *original* although showed some dents and scrapes on the drivers side....doors did not fit at all!
It was still white at that time, with evidence of roundels on the doors but no stripes; the motor was a 427 *side-oiler* with 2 X 4Bbl carbs and huge side exit exhausts.

It also had a sheriffs department chain & lock !!! because it was purportedly stolen......

Same car? Then where after that......?

 

If it was 1963, then the engine would have been a 427 Low Riser. All cast iron with either single or dual 4 barrel aluminum intake manifold. These were non-side oiler engines.

The 427 Medium Riser engines came out in 1965 and these were side oiler as used on AC Cobras, GT 40s, and Ford/Merc muscle cars.

 

1. I don't know the car, but it does not seem right to call it a Maserati.

2. Congratulations to Walter for not saying so in his usual self-assured tone!

3. Anyway, I'll guess:
. Where did the 427 come from--Holman & Moody?
I would say yes. Where else?
. Was it iron blocks and iron head or at least an aluminum set of heads?
I doubt any big block Ford aluminum was available at the time. Not even from somebody like Offenhauser.
. What about Webers?
Not likely. I agree with the previous poster. Must have been one or two 4 barrels into a common intake plenum manifold.
. Was it connected to a four speed from the U.S.?
Again, what else? Probably a Borg-Warner top loader.
. Did Cunningham order this car to be built/retrofitted?
I thought he was campaigning a Chrysler engine car at that time?

I remain completely ignorant of this car and would like to see some photos if anybody can find some.

Carmine

 

Carmine,
however - the car is a Maserati as it was build by them but later -as with many of their cars- converted to American muscle.

 

Carmine - for you!

......from a quick goog search....
(And I still think it's a Maserati; just suffering from some yankee ingenuity...)
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©Nigel Smuckatelli
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I would Imagine Cunningham one of the richest men in racing could get what ever he wanted.

I wish I could have seen it race

the 427 was more than most Europeans could handle

 

A car is a system. The engine is a major part of that system. When a car (chassis, suspension, dimensions) is not designed for this kind of specification its a bad package.

The 151 with this big but simple V8 was a bad package! The only propper historic 2-seater race cars from the USA are the Ford GT40 and the Cobra (where the package worked) and both are developed or are based based on European conceptions.

 

No no: you saw its twin chassis 006 with a Maserati V8 engine: your post above mentions a US engine but 006 never had such a thing.

Chassis 004 the one crashed by Nascar driver Panch was destroyed in that accident, written off, that is undeniable. Some of its burned out bits are floating around but 004 ceased to exist at daytona decades ago.

006 was used as a road car in the late sixties in california before ending up in Peter Kaus Aschaffenburg museum in Germany where he also had a replica of the 1964 version of the Tipo 151 002 ex Maserati France car destroyed in Lucky Cassner's April 64 Le Mans test crash.

To be clear there is a god awful replica of the 64 version (very inferior to the ex kaus replica) running around in US vintage circles.

006 is now owned by Laurence Auriana the Wall Street magnate. I spoke to François Sicard his chief mechanic at Monaco during the Historc GP weekend 4 days ago and François (who crewed on these cars when they were new at Le Mans) said there was no specific vintage racing program planned for 006: I hope we see it again soon because Goodwood last October was really fantastic and it came third!

best regards,

Marc

 

:

 

Cheetah and Chaparral also come to mind. There might be others.

The Lola-based Ford GT and the AC-based Cobra, I would say were better balanced cars with the small block engines (289 cu in ~= 4.7 liter), if not as fast in a straight line as with the 427.

Not race cars but there were a few other guys like: Rivolta, DeTomaso, Bizzarini, Monteverdi, Facel ... So the Euro car with USA engine combo can be made to work.

Sorry for drifting so far off-topic.

 

This is from Chuck Jones on Tipo 151 004, "Chuck Jones personally buried that chassis in the land fill at what is now the University of California at Irvine, 40 plus years ago, along with a number of other bits and pieces from various race cars that later took on a value that no one imagined at the time. I watched a bulldozer do even more damage to the frame as it was buried than it received at Daytona a couple of of years earlier."

 

Sure enough, and add Jensen to that list as well. The big difference is, that all of them were designed to take Detroit iron from the start.
I can only guess what the torque-curve of a prepped 427 of any description looks like, and it is not difficult to imagine what it does to a relatively light frame designed around an engine with different characteristics.

I am, for instance, also stunned that the wire-wheels would hold up to the load!

 

Who says they did?

A nutty thing to do but hey, there was a lot of by-the-seat-of-your-pants "engineering" going on back then.

Contrast that with today where a supercomputer simulates all of the tracks they'll race on and then also simulates the car's operation on those tracks. (Acura)

Now that's really overboard nuts IMHO but then there's huge money at stake.

 

The small-block Cobra was for sure the better balanced car compared the the 7-liter monster! This was confirmed to me by a Fchatter who drove both.

 

Marc - I certainly understand what you say, and no point to dispute the issue, but I do/did clearly know the difference betw. a 427 Ford and a Maserati motor...;-) I was shopping for the 427 motor; that was my interest in the car at the time. Must have been a replicar.....

 

Hello Tritone:

Well the books (Tipo 151 by Bollee & Ooesthoek, La Maserati du Colonel by Bollée) make no mention of a US V8 in 006 but it is possible that the Maser engine may have had a problem and that as was done many times on various Ferraris, Maseratis and other Italian cars in the US it was replaced with a US V8 shortly before or after the car was bought from Chuck Jones by a French scoundrel living near San Francisco. After that it was sold to a garage in San Jose before ending up in Peter Kaus' German museum: Kaus did buy it with at least one original engine and that is all that is relevant to Maserati books.

You don't have photos by any chance?

best regards,

Marc

 

Peter Kaus had 3 151-engines for that car!

 

Sorry Marc; no pix; I was nowhere near smart enough to be taking pix of great cars back then! After all; I was there for the 427 V8; what does that tell you about my state of mind? ;-) In my next life I will correct that error!

 

Walter glad to hear that.

Tritone don't lambast yourself back them nobody took photos whereas now there is a gigantic morass of photo excess anytime anything takes place.

In the fall I updated a registry for another car within another book I have been working on. The file had 1000 photos at the start of my work week, 10000 at the end of it. What was achieved? Almost nothing: 99% digital duplication, redundant shots...

best regards,

Marc

 

I know that feeling; google images: the best thing for photo research? No, nearly the worst! I'm assisting a bit with a Silicon valley design historian currently; it's a revelation watching & listening to his process.
Good luck to you!

 

Many thanks likewise!

Marc