Maserati exhibition

Mairesse - I don't drink alcohol - but that sounds like a thoroughly civilised proposition. Having played my part in screwing-up the 450S saga in past years this thread has been truly fascinating. I too remain puzzled by the alleged 3503, however.

Photo Strictly Copyright: The GP Library - Geoffrey Goddard

DCN
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Unfortunately the chances of me getting to Modena are 1%. I was just there at the end of Sept. a few weeks before this present exhibit opened.

If it was nothing more than a weekend drive from somewhere like Germany, France or the UK that would be a different story.

 

Nembo1777: I need to clarify one thing. The Costin Zagato Coupe did NOT receive a new chassis when it was recommissioned for Byron Staver. This car has had the same chassis for it's entire life. The chassis was lengthened for Staver. The factory build sheets state "lenghtened 200 mm". You can see the welds and inserted new tubes in the chassis today. So 4506/4501/4512 has only had one chassis.

 

Italiancars: Your list of the 450S is correct as of our research at this time. Good memory!!

 

Doug,
Are really your hears flying in the wind?
Well, all this this seems now moving in the direction of a noisy, friendly meeting in Modena with some alchool and good local food.
Sorry for not having you with us, italiancars, but I know that a trip from the other side of the pond is a bit complicated.
I am satisfied with your changed opinion and you have a permanent invitation to came and see 4501 whenever you might be in Italy.
Franco

 

Franco,
Thank you for the invite. The same goes for you if you ever make to this side of the Atlantic.

Here are a few pictures you may or may not have seen before from our little backyard cookout. I think Walter may have shot one or two of these.

Dyke you also have an open invitation.
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Agree, at this time. I would think that these recent revelations can't set too well with a car claiming the #4505 identity?

 

Doug,
I think your researches about the 450Ss were in the pre-internet age.. I think a lot of that research might be outdated today!

We all -well most of all- played a part in discovering the history of cars made by Maserati ...including our errors and mistakes...

 

Joe,
yeeeees....all are from your great event and the photos are well know.....

 

We've had 5 of the 6 US based 450S' at the event. My goal has always been to get them all together (even the ones in Europe) plus the sole surviving Tipo 151.

 

Ah yes, hair blowing in the wind... I remember that sensation. Today it's whiskers only. Re Behra's destructive pre-Mille Miglia testing accident in what Jenks would now describe as '4501/1'...has anybody ever seen a photograph of the wrecked car? I cannot recall ever having located such a shot. Even DSJ - who was there with the team at the time - didn't have one. Or is my memory failing and has such a thing been published?

DCN

 

..e voilá!
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Ugh... But fantastic! Thank you Walter.

From the angle of that right-front wheel the chassis has clearly suffered gravely. Jeannot was plainly a lucky boy to get away with it.

DCN

 

Ah, thank you Dyke (long time since we met!) I had always believed what you say and was induced in error by a previous post in this excellent thread thank you for setting me straight.

Franco: Tom Meade when I interviewed him in Santa Monica in May of 1996 said that 3503 was crashed by a friend of his after which he sold it...apparently to Gerry Sutterfield. He never mentioned Moss however but of course Tom's memory was fuzzy and rosy back then already!

A small world aside: George Garbutt who would be Maserati USA CEO in the seventies had his first ride in a Maserati some years before...when he found that friends he visited in the midwest were neighbors of the then owner of the Costin Zagato 450S Berlinetta and he was invited into the passenger seat!

best regards,

Marc

 

Dear Joe,
Thanks for posting those splendid photos of the Ponoco meeting. Always a pleasure to see them. This might surprise you, but I must say I am absolutely fascinated by the beautifu cream 4CS spider Brianza (Am I wrong? I do not know much about prewar cars).
Walter and Doug: I've always been trying to find a better pix of the Behra's accident, but this lousy one seems to be the only one available.
More tomorrow,
Franco

 

Here we go. Have a lot more.
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Franco,
the white 4CS by Brianza unfortunately has a new body. But the car looks great!

 

The only photo I have seen of the Behra crash on May 10th is on page 28 of Willem's book. It is incorrectly identified as chassis #4503. You can see from this photo that the car was comprehensively damaged. There was no way the car could be repaired, race prepped and transported to the Nurburgring (by the factory's 45 mph transporter) for practice by the 23rd of May. The photo makes it obvious that the car has sustained major chassis damage, and to Maserati, the repairs (if even possible) would be more costly than just having a new chassis constructed.

 

I was probably wrong. My doubt about the Internet as a place where serious research cannot be really handled seems to be – at least in this case – seriously confounded. My posts have been initially greeted with a bit of sufficiency or arrogance, but now that some serious researchers are getting into the picture and evidence has been produced, the quality of this thread took off.
The overall picture set up by Dyke (and Willem) and now recap by italiancar in post 67 is more o or less correct. I say more or less because – by definition – researching is an endless task and the more you dig into it, the more you discover.
A few problems and questions are still with us. For example:
Why Maserati having two absolute weapons available in March 1957 to disrupt the Ferrari opposition went to Sebring with a lone 450S, while Maranello always fielded four works cars?
What about the chronology (and identity) matter of having 4502 readied in October 1956, while 4501 (the first “production” 450S?) was readied in January?
Finally, some serious analysis of bodywork might be helpd. Keeping in mind that Medardo Fantuzzi was not a Maserati employee paid by hour, but a sort of independent artisan working “a cottimo” (that means being paid by each unity of job). He tended therefore to do major total rebodying with cars that might only require some “adjustment”. More could be added here, as suggested by Walter in post 61, but this and a few other relevant problems might be discussed in our Modena workshop.
Coming now to Bjoern last post (n. 57), please, no rush, et surtout pas trop de zèle. We all have our normal life, Take your time. Just hope you might be now convinced by the exposed evidence. And yes, I am also the owner of 0466M. Somehow I have a feeling you intend to take a detour here. The matter has been recently discussed in Fchat after the exhibition this February at Retromobile of the 0466M Pinin Farina and I think I gave some good answer. After having concentrated our attention to the 450S matters, we may then get into another discussion.
Let me also add that when I bought these two cars in 1979 and 1981, competition cars values were sensibly lower then today figures. Nevertheless, even in those days, they were not coming for free and I had to move within the financial constraints of the resources available to a (then) young university assistant professor. I simply could not efford to buy the top racing cars coming to the market.
Sometime I was lucky. Perhaps I will later entertain all of you telling how I ended up buying 3501>4501. Let me simply add that the local gang (Steve Griswold, Nino Epifani, Phil Reilly, etc.) was really mad at me for having found the car within 150 miles of San Francisco!
Some other times I paid real money, even then. When in 1977 I bought my Maserati A6G CS berlinetta Pf (the two tone of blue Turin Show car) I spent a full night awake looking the roof of my room, calculating how many years of my salary would be necessary to buy the car. I never regret having taken that step.
Better remember here – before somebody might raise the point – that this is one of the two berlinettas, out of four made, sitting on a correct Maserati A6G CS chassis not being the original one. Everybody knows it and I never told anything different. Having my car possibly the most original and better looking body of them all, I am nevertheless rather satisfied with it.
Franco Lombardi

 

Franco,
the reason why #4502 was finished before #4501 made it on its wheels was perhaps that it had been ordered by Parravano, a very impatient character! Seems that he was very pushy to get this car.
It would be interesting to compare the chassis of #4501 with #4502, because the frame of #4502 differs significantly to the chassis`of the later cars!

Another explanation could be that #4501 was in fact earlier finished than #4502. But Maserati issued a build-sheet to a car when finished, issed a new one when the car had undergone a development and/or modification and threw away the first build-sheet.
They did it with -almost- all 300Ss so it was a common practice!

Perhaps the reason why Maserati showed up in Sebring `57 with only one 450S but with two 300S and one 250S prototype is that Maserati simply did not trust the car at that early stage for the World Championship. The 300S was always the trusty backbone of the Factory team.

Sebring `57 was for sure the best prepaired and organized race entry by Maserati S.p.A. of all in that period! I described that in my book about the 300S:

"The June issue of MCA-RACING NEWS, the official publication of the Maserati Corporation of America wrote about the Factory team: “...The Sebring expedition involved four cars, more than five tons of spares and miscellaneous material, eight drivers, eight mechanics, and approximately ten other people ...”

And they made it and #4503 and #3071 steamrolled every Ferrari in that race!

 

I was under the impression that Paravanno had "bankrolled" the V-8 project. As such, Maserati would have been forced to get him a car first, since it was his money that made the 450S possible.

 

Dear Franco,

now I am through all those important posts and I have re-checked with my own notes. Of course I owe you an answer now.

I was always very convinced that 3501 became the one and only 4501 which later became the Costin Coupe. And indeed, the Costin Coupe ran as 4501 at Le Mans in 1957. I had no reason and no evidence on hand to believe something contrary.

And so I never believed that there was a second car wearing 4501 besides your 3501/4501. This is because I never saw any logic reason that 3501/4501 was lying around unused at the Maserati factory between 1956 and 1965. Why not use it for the 1957 race season or - at least - why did Maserati not cash in on 3501/4501 and sell it to a customer which they did with other 450 S racers ?

Of course, I know that to think logically does not do any justice to the genius of Maserati at that time. But in this case I (still) can not see any genius behind to answer why Maserati did not use or sell it when it still was competitive.

Further more I found it also convincing what Bollée/Oosthoek wrote about the Costin Coupé in their book "Maserati 450 S" though I also had seriuos doubts about some of their research results (i.e. they wrote that 4502 was completely rebodied (when only the front nose was re-shaped) which is absolutely nonsense and damaging the reputation of the car).

Anyway, after having read your as well as Dyke Ridgley's postings and having reviewed the evidence you have presented as well as having noticed that Maserati's build sheets state "Renumbered to 4501 provisionally" I am willing to accept (to say the least...) the originality and the history of your car as genuine. I will change the presented history on barchetta.cc for 3501/4501 today.

Nevertheless there are still a lot of questions to solve so I can not agree in Dyke's statement "End of Story". In example I still have not a final opinion about the bodywork of 3501/4501.

What I agree is that it would be very interesting to compare your car with the first 450 S #4502. Therefore we should definitely meet in Modena for a "450 S Symposium" and I offer to bring 4502 down to Modena (Joe, 4502 is owned by a collector based near Stuttgart/Germany and so not in Switzerland; btw, it is registered for road use...).

My regards

Bjoern

 

Bjoern: My statement "End of Story" referred to the history of the Costin Coupe only, not any of the other 450S cars. I do feel that we now do know the complete history of the Costin Coupe. Luckily, the Coupe is such a significant car that its ownership history after it left the factory has been well documented and I have all those records with the car. Thanks to Franco, Mr. Collina and Mr. Cozza, we now know the car's "factory" history, and I have copies of the relevant factory records. It was the Coupe "only" that I was referring to with my statement.

 

This is a shot of the 450S Berlinetta taken by Jenks in the Le Mans paddock at the 1957 24-Hour race. He always reckoned that this was the ONLY angle from which the hastily-cobbled together car looked any good. Bertocchi is in the driver's seat, warming up the V8 engine.

Jenks was the last person in the world to be a conspiracy theorist, but he remained suspicious until the end of his hectic life that "somebody at Maserati was trying to 'get' Moss". He was very suspicious of their brake pedal failure so early in the Mille Miglia. And then there was the mysterious case of a large spanner left on top of the engine which slid into the throttle mechanism, jamming it open. Stirl wasn't very impressed, but Jenks remained far more outspoken about such incidents, especially during that frenetic 1957 season.

There is far more to motor racing history than arguments over the provenance of cars built for giants, and subsequently traded mostly by midgets.

DCN
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Doug,
Great post. Really a lovely photo of the Zagato-Costin coupé!
I found your note about Jenks suspicions very interesting. I hope to find the time to discuss the point as it deserves some comments. I will be probably try to suggest that bad luck, confusion, limited resources and lack of organized preparation more then anything else hampered the genial solutions (and hard-work) that usually characterized Maserati efforts.
Franco