Spent many years in Australia,owned and raced by local Bob Jane,whom also owned new a lightweight Jaguar E-type,the fastest Jaguar mark 2 in the world,various Brabham Climax /Repco cars and still owns from new a McLaren M6A sports car with a Repco big block V8. Below photo is not mine,but i have over 100 photos of this car from 1956 at Albert park right up till when Bob Jane sold it,including photos of it being driven in latter life around the Kew Boulevard. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Correct - but its much more important race-history was not in Australia! As a Factory-car it won the 1956-1000 km Nuerburgring, was 2nd in the Targa Florio and won the Bari GP not to mention the Giro di Sicilia and the MM - all in 1956.
never knew it was 2nd in the Targa Florio,some of the photos I have were after it finished racing in the early 60s,it was in a terriable mess,a worn out old racing car.I suspect Bob Jane still has the hardtop and spare set of wheels,as he was known to keep anything and everything including the Rice trailer,after it finished racing it sat for years in his old race factory in Brunswick in Melbourne. I suspect the Australian TT win in 1956 ,there were over 100,000 people at that race event,not bad for a nation that has always punched above her weight,hows the economy in Europe,ours is ticking along nice thankyou.
We can talk about importance or not back and forth - but the entries as a Factory team car in the World Sportscar Championship with drivers like Moss, Behra, Taruffi etc, is hard to match by the events in Down Under - and the 1000 km Nuerburing `56 had about 200,000 spectators. Interesting is, that Maserati sold 2 of their team cars (#3059 and #3055) to Australia.
Guess they were last years race cars,and it helped pay for the racing down under,its pity neither car is still in Australia,for the life of me i don't understand why Jane sold it.
Yep, they were just race cars and Maserati always was in need of cash to finance their race activities. Bob Jane sold it because it was "just a race car" at that time.
