Maserati exhibition

Let me start with the Buenos Aires 1000Km of 20 January 1957, the maiden race of the 450S. From the Ferrari Resoconto di gara (Race Report):
16 January, telegram sent to Maranello by the Ferrari team in Buenos Aires:
“OGGI NON ABBIAMO PROVATO PERCHE’ CIRCUITO SENZA CHICANES EST PERICOLOSISSIMO ET NON CONFORME PLANIMETRIA INVIATA CON REGOLAMENTO STOP ABBIAMO FORMALMENTE RICHIESTO CHICANES DICHIARANDO CHE SENZA NON CORREREMO ‘1000 KM.’ STOP AUTOCLUB SI RIUNIRA’ QUESTA SERA PER DECIDERE STOP FORTE OPPOSIZIONE CONCORRENZA STOP NOSTRI PILOTI SOLIDALI NOSTRA DECISIONE”
This was after the “bazooka” went out for the first time there on a very fast circuit where Ferrari refused to race, if some chicanes would not be introduced.
On 17 January for the second test session, now with the required chicanes to slow down top speed, Fangio recorded 3min 37sec and 2/10 while Moss lapped with the same 4501 in 3min. 37sec and 6/10. The Ferrari ranged between the 3min 47sec and 7/10 of Perdisa and the 3min 51sec of Castellotti (with Musso only lapping in 3min 59sec and 0.1). This means that, at its first official outing, the bazooka was giving 10 second per lap to the Ferraris.
By the last official practice session of 19 January, with Fangio and Moss not really interested to push the Tipo 54 to its limits, they comfortably lapped in 3min 36sec and 1/10 while the Ferrari reduced the distance with the 4 cams driven by Musso and Castellotti both at 3 min 38sec and 4/10, while considerably slower were the other Ferrari drivers.
From the very outset of the season it was clear that Maserati had the weapon to wipe the opposition (“The 4500 of the opposition…because of its drivers or the car showed to be clearly superior to our cars…Their 8 cylinder, until in the race, it really dominated the field. The retirement was due to a gearbox/transmission failure. Fangio has declared that the car is stable and has really plenty of power”). In the words of Amorotti, Sculati and Tavoni you may see all the Ferrari concern.
As we all know, by the end of the season, at Caracas, if I may use my own previous words, “bad luck, confusion, limited resources and lack of organized preparation more then anything else hampered the genial solutions (and hard-work) by Maserati”, and Ferrari will get the laurels.
But this is only a sort of preamble to some comments spur by Doug’s post. More later.
Franco Lombardi

 

Was that pretty little Brianza bodied car once owned by Eric Stewart here in the UK? I call such a body being recreated for him by Tony Merrick, because we provided some contemporary reference to it from the Milan Salone dell'Automobile of around 1932-33 (ish).

Incidentally, further to Franco's illuminating post above, in historical terms world-class sports car racing through the 1950s and '60s self-evidently hit two tremendous peaks of technical attainment. The first was in 1957 with the 450S and the Ferrari 4-cam cars representing that high tide mark. And the second was ten years later, in 1967, when Ferrari P4 confronted 7-litre Ford Mks IV and IIB, the Chaparral 2F, Lola T70GT etc...but unhappily Maserati were no longer in the fray.

We used to talk about 'high-tide cars'. The 1937 Mercedes-Benz W125 was quite plainly one, the 1955 300SLR and Longnose Jaguar D-Type could be considered two more. But there was never any argument about the 450S, with its
literally ground-shaking presence and blistering speed, which always qualified in every respect except adequately
organised preparation, good fortune, and a World Championship title. A high-tide car with knobs on...

DCN

 

I have just received a message from Franco Lombardi asking me to say that his internet connection in Genoa has failed and he might not be able to make the further posts he intended to contribute here for 2-3 days. Repair services are similarly duff here in the UK....

DCN

 

Thanks Doug! Coming from my humble archive that contains some other little treasures related to Maserati! (but -still- no interest in any of the "green" cars!..

 

Yep, I discussed this with Willem when he was in the process of writing the book as he never had inspected the car. But he did not listen! When the book came out and the then-time owner went into orbit when became aware what was written in the book about the "new" body!
The owner wanted to sue Willem on the spot.
I was contacted by him and by further discussion with Willem, who had to write a letter to him apologizing for his error, the "case" was closed.....!

In my archive I also have some letters written by Mr. Martinez in the very late 50s who was the 2nd owner of #4502.

 

My internet line is gone. It will be out of order for a couple of days. I am working on a longer comment to Doug's issue, but I'll be unable to post. Please be patient with me.
Franco Lombardi

 

Being finally back with a proper Internet line, let me now offer some further elements for discussion.

Doug Nye has offered an important contribution, mentioning Jenks's suspicions in relationship to some mysterious Maserati accidents, but my feeling is that the conspiracy theory that sometimes lurks into journalists' period analysis (and then perhaps get amplified in historians’ research) is almost always unfounded, aside, possibly, from a few clear cases of internal “politics”, as in the notorious case of Dragoni v. Surtees.

Let me say that my knowledge of matters related to Ferrari and Maserati racing cars and teams focuses largely upon sports-car racing of the mid-1950s, and my Grand Prix car knowledge is more limited. This might be a consequence of being co-author - as some of you might know, with Antoine Prunet - of the forthcoming book, Ferrari in Linea - The 4- and 6-Cylinder Sports Cars and Related Types (1953-1957). I may add that a few comments here are derived from some areas of research for this project.

Through the years – quite a few years, actually – while researching this area I spent some time interviewing Ferrari designers, drivers, technicians, team managers and mechanics who had been active in those days. Although there are obviously stories of personal dislikes and of fierce differences (mostly amongst drivers), you get the feeling that nobody was ever rowing against the team directions or operating in the darkness against the general goals at Maranello. Chatting with ex-works Maserati mechanics, Bietolini and Lodi, with Majorana or Golinelli, with Ermanno Cozza or even with Aurelio Bertocchi, I again sensed that nobody ever played dirty tricks. It is worth emphasising, nevertheless, that in the Via Ciro Menotti factory (of Maserati, of course) the strong personal position gained though the years by the ever-present Guerino Bertocchi could have sometime created some sort of resentment or difficulty within the team because of his strong personality. It is known that he even had the power to oppose chief engineer Vittorio Bellentani in several internal organizational matters . His almost uncontrolled power within the Factory did create at times some frictions.

Talking of the famous brake pedal failure that befell Moss in the 1957 Mille Miglia, you might like to know how that story developed the following Monday. Having seen a camionetta parked outside the factory with the Carabinieri doing some traffic control, Ingegnere Alfieri entered the race department and called out the man responsible for that welding, shouting: “Get out and go to the Carabinieri’s vehicle at the front!” “But why, ingegnere?” “Go there and tell them 'Arrest me! I steal 60,000 lire each month from Maserati. You are fired!”

According to Cozza, in fact, the responsibility for that poor job was never really established, but Lodi and Bietolini both claimed of having assisted during this… short conversation. It is worth adding that 60,000 lire was a good salary in 1957, only earned by race-team mechanics, while their normal “production” colleagues struggled to make 40,000 lire.

Talking of brake-pedal failure, this was not really such a rare occurrence. At the Gran Premio dell’Autodromo, held at Monza on 29 June 1953, Ascari’s Ferrari 625TF (0302TF) was comfortably leading the first race Heat and did not seem to have difficulty in controlling his rivals, until during his 13th lap, before the first Lesmo curve, trying to avoid the spinning 250MM (0270MM) of Bianca Maria Piazza, his car's brake pedal stem, which he had had lengthened after practice, simply snapped. Brakeless, and even after contact with Signora Piazza’s slower car, Ascari did a long excursion among the Monza Park trees. The German magazine Auto Motor und Sport dated 11 July pretended that the Italian World Champion mistook the accelerator for the brake. Nonsense. It was simply the same failure that struck Moss four years later, in a rather more prominent motor race...

In abstract terms, an act of sabotage, dictated by possible personal hatred or as some revenge for lost (yet expected) rewards might be theorically possible, but not only there is NO evidence whatsoever of it, but the strong and well-known dedication to their work that characterizes Emilians is universally known and recognised. Hours and hours of hard work, often at night, in dark garages off circuits in any corner of the world deserve the full respect earned by so many victories (and by the bitter disappointment of honourable defeat).

In that context, it seems useful to reflect more deeply on the criticism made of the Ferrari and Maserati racing team management in those years, in particular by a number of attentive and perceptive Anglo-Saxon observers. Many – among them (though long after the event) Joel Finn – pointed the finger at the apparent chaos and disorganization that historically seemed to reign in the Italian pits at races. It is true that shouting, quarrels, frantic gesticulation, unrestrained swearing and vigorous invitations to the most disparate sexual practices (yes, really!) were not completely unusual amongst mechanics, engineers and sometimes also the drivers, but in reality some or all of this is part of the Italian national character and Latin temperament. A foreign observer, accustomed to more controlled behaviour and calm exchanges of opinion, might form the idea that the Maserati or Ferrari pits were the perfect representation of chaos, and that the performance of the team had to suffer in consequence. All in all, a classic example of a “grande casino italiano,” to quote Niki Lauda. Foreign journalists, engineers and inside observers often spoke ironically of the confusion they thought characterized the atmosphere in the pits. The terms 'Fred Karno's Army' after the circus impresario, and 'Chinese fire drill' tended to be bandied about without the teams in question really earning such criticism.

It really is necessary to see, at least in part, this legend in proper perspective... If the national character – especially in moments of great pressure – led to attitudes likely to affect and perhaps generate hilarity among more composed observers from the other side of the Alps and oceans, one needs to remember that behind that cacophony of shouting and swearing are highly commendable levels of efficiency and commitment, accompanied in Ferrari’s case by a substantial level of preparation and professionalism. All of this was normally preceded by long hours of track testing and innumerable instances of assembly and disassembly - for inspection and analysis - in the test shop. The shouting and gesticulations of an entire generation of engineers and mechanics certainly merit the respect that the overall results impose. Besides, anybody who has the chance to analyze the Ferrari internal race reports would discover meticulous and exhaustive indications of data on the weather conditions, lap-times in practice and in the race not only of the Company’s cars, but also those of adversaries and private entrants, together with detailed recording of patient modifications, adaptations and tests aimed at experimenting and improving their cars’ performance and even with precise data on the discovered wear rate of brake linings or tyres.

Several posts in this thread, mostly coming from chatters belonging to northern Countries – including a personal mail by Kare Pietila – express perennial surprise at the poor internal administration demonstrated by Maserati (and Ferrari). I am confident that racing car records at Mercedes-Benz were probably kept with more care (although I am told that a few identity swaps may be found even there), but, as Doug told admirably,. there was nothing less relevant to Maserati and Ferrari racing teams that identity matters when dealing with their internal stuff.

You see, we are now used to identity documentation being handled increasingly by electronic devices. There are micro chips on which all your personal data, photo, finger prints, past trips, political and/or sexual preferences, food tastes and more might be easily contained and scanned in fractions of a second. But we still belong to a generation where at the question “Your identity?” one will answer something like “Franco Lombardi, di Giuseppe e Ines Campagna”. There is a trace in this of a long oral tradition of presenting and introducing yourself with reference to your fathers and ancestors, almost an echo of Volume 2 of the Iliad in which the Greek fleet is assembled before Troy and each king and hero is presented (and identified) going back to his ancestors and possibly way back to some God taking occasional fun amongst mere mortals.

Well, in a simple and small world like the Italian racing departments of the 1950s do you really think that Giulio Alfieri or Aurelio Lampredi would ask: “take out number 2345S”? He would have probably shouted: “bring out Fangio’s car!”, or “Gonzalez's one! – Which one? – the one he smashed at Dundrod!” and I am fairly confident nobody misunderstood their orders. Not too difficult when you might perhaps have only four or five works cars in front of you.

Correct, properly planned cars, fully coincident with the drawings coming from the Technical Office? Not always so. Works racing cars and prototypes were constantly evolved, mixing consolidated lines of thought with impromptu experiments involving cutting and welding, last moment modification and adjustments realized “in opera” (“on the field”). You’ll end up with a drawing showing a straight front cross-member yet the relative car – absolutely that very same car built essentially to that drawing – presents a “V” shaped front cross member, or something similar.

Any kind of alteration, modification, change of engine types or whatever could be done to a racing car with the aim of improving of its performance was universally regarded as being perfectly legitimate and normal.

So you’ll end up, inside internal racing department records at Maranello with some “vettura bastarda”. This could cause some surprise among readers less familiar with Ferrari matters, but should not do so. The technical office had for some time used that term internally to refer to hybrids and those experimental prototypes mixing different technical approaches. Contrary to what it may seem to infer, there was no derogatory connotation to that odd expression; in fact, the term “bastarda” even contains a kindly, affectionate inference. As everybody knows, little bastards, the result of extemporary crosses, are often vivacious creatures capable of good performance. That goes for the puppies raised everywhere and tolerated in the courtyards of factories and workshops and it is just as true of creatures of steel, the result of improvised “nips and tucks”, of attempts not always programmed (and perhaps of long nights of work), but of which one becomes fond, no different from legitimate children.

The two new works Ferrari 250TRs for 1958 (0726 and 0728) are systematically defined in that way in the race reports. The affectionate nickname is only apparently derogatory, when used inside the factory, as with reference to the 250 Testa Rossa prototypes 0666 and 0704: chassis inspired by old four cams and 500TRCs, engines from the Grand Tourers, Tipo 520 De Dion axles, Tipo 508 gearboxes and any other conceivable exchange and crossing of parts. It didn’t matter that the hybrid planning stage, provided the “bastarda” worked, finished the race, won and brought much-needed cash to the Company.

On top of this we should take into consideration the well-known financial constraints that Ferrari (and even more Maserati) laboured under at the time. The race team guys rushed home after any race just to bring the prize money home to pay the workers' salary. Ferrari was generally a more successful team then Maserati, essentially because it had a bit more money flowing in and because they had a better internal organization. Period.

It might be worth mentioning here, that the Ferrari practice of indicating internal numbers and of numbering several mechanical components does often help in tracing identities and in addressing research. Not so at Maserati, where control on mechanical parts and components through numbering was almost never applied, making advanced research there extremely difficult. We suspect that helping future historians and the Classiche Department was probably not the main priority of Enzo Ferrari. The shrewd and savvy Commendatore, was simply acting wisely in order to hold firm control on his spare stock, rendering vanishing tricks by dishonest employees and workers much more difficult. Doug has reminded me of the great Colin Chapman of Lotus once discovering that an employee had a fullproduction line of 'freelance' Lotus 6 chassis operating in his home apartment!.

From a technical point of view, the beauty, the cleverness and the quality of Maserati’s solutions in our years under scrutiny is quite remarkable. Talking of the 450S, think of their front drum brakes: a masterpiece of sheer mechanical beauty and a component largely superior to the drums used by contemporary Ferraris. Another detail. The transmission shaft of the 450S is not a classic piece of tube made in good quality steel as used normally in such a situation. In the Tipo 54 we have instead a billet of highly specialised steel, drilled longitudinally throughout its length, fully splined at both ends, hardened, quenched and then again taken through final machining and then once again heat treated and balanced, all in order to obtain a degree of flexibility that allowed the shaft to twist within itself to help absorb the heaviest torque loads applied by the massive V8 engine. As 'simple' as that.

If you add on top of this the bad luck that marred Maserati in 1957, as on that dreadful final day for the works team at Caracas, then you have the final tessera of the mosaic. All this helps us to understand why the brilliant, underdeveloped and poorly prepared Maseratis were normally the underdog, and the underdog is quite often more loved than the winner. When I was a ten year-old boy quite impressed, as were my schoolmates, by the epics of Iliad, the brave, brilliant and unfortunate showing of Hector, somehow seemed more appealing than Achilles’ arrogant superiority. I know that Stirling Moss himself simply adored the position of being the underdog, battling against overwhelming odds...with the hope of triumphing over them. This was much of the reason why he adored driving for Maserati, and later for Rob Walker's private Formula 1 team against 'the big battalions'. And that matches precisely the attitude of so many Maseratisti.

I could go on, but I guess I should leave you with some other detail worth reading in our book. After all, Antoine and I are here to tease you, as we have to sell it.
Franco Lombardi

 

Franco: BRAVO!!!! A wonderful treatise that states my feelings about the reality of what happened in this era much more eloquently than I ever could have done. All of my research over the years has led me to believe that the men at Ferrari and Maserati were much better organized than previously thought. Once you understand specific items like the 450S cam followers that are designed to give a variable ratio to the valve timing and lift as the valve opens and closes, you begin to understand the level of enginnering talent that was present at these firms in this era. My research into the factory race records also surprised me with the detail which they recorded, not only about their own cars, but those of the competition. If you want to know what tire pressures Mercedes ran in Tripoli in 1935, Ferrari has it! Franco, this is a great contribution to this discussion and helps put all of this era into perspective.

 

Caro Franco!
.....perfetto and Mille Grazie!
But you forgot one thing:
Alfieri was an engineer who loved technic! His technical solutions were almost very advanced but difficult to maintain! His inline 6 engines had 2 cams and double ignitions while Ferrari had their -relative- simple one-camshaft engines!
Look to his very complicated V12 design- beautiful and great to look at --- but totally unreliable and not powerfull enough!! If he would have "copied" the simple V12s from ol ' Enzo his cars would have been much more successful!

A very important collector and racer of high value Ferraris and Maserati clealy pointed out to me that the Maranello V12need much less attention than his 6s from Modena!

 

Good point Walter. Pete Coltrin introduced me to Alfieri who I found absolutely charming, very humble and supremely impressive because of that. He told me that while the Maserati mindset was always to beat Ferrari, they also strove to overcome what he described as an innate Italian-industry inferiority complex compared to those moneyed hordes of Germans at Mercedes-Benz. These people, that both he and Old Man Ferrari described darkly as the 'TransAlpini', spurred Alfieri on to attempt exotic and sophisticated engineering solutions. Plainly, Maserati did not (quite) have the number of men and the sums of money on hand adequately to develop all of those solutions... They were, and always would be, the underdogs.

Love 'em.

DCN

 

Thanks for your kind words, Dyke and Walter. Glad to hear you enjoyed my post.
Let me briefly get back to the identity question related to my car. Having finally convinced all our friends that she is works car 3501, then identifies by the factory as 4501 (when sent in testing at the 1956 Sveriges GP with engine 4501), then decommissioned, disassembled and sold in 1956 as 350SI # 10, a final word about her identity is still needed.
Both in italiancars list of 450S chassis and in the now corrected Barchetta cc listing, the car is identified as 3501 – then Muletto/Prototype 450S in Sweden – then sold in 1965 as 350S # 10.
As correctly suggested by Dike, and as clearly and officially stated by Maserati, the car had in summer-fall 1956 formal identity 4501. The Factory even suggested it should be stamped as 4501, including it both in its 350S list and in its 450S list as 4501, vettura prototipo.
Having now accepted the idea that identities were sometimes swapped at the times, according to the needs of the moment, the car correct identification is therefore: 3501>4501>350SI n. 10. More specifically, the correct historical identification is 3501>4501, while identity 350SI n. 10 does not have any real historical meaning, but is just a sort of “commercial” code with which it was sold (and probably the one to be used in case of a road registration).
Being this what officially declared by Maserati, I would like all of you to take this point in proper consideration. I am kindly asking Bjoern, therefore, to insert this relevant data in the revised Barchetta listing, including 3501>4501 also in the 450S listing.
Talking of interesting identity matters, I might add that next to 3501>4501 at the MEF Exhibition we have, a lovely Ferrari Tipo 119/129 (or, if you prefer, a Tipo 857S) with an analogous identity swap well-known to Ferrari historians and researcher, then finally sold (and formally identified) in 1956 as 0203M. Happy to discuss with all of you the mystery of this number that does not fit in any of the sequences used by Ferrari. My theory? Simply a wicked joke done at the time by Ferrari administrative clerks to put in some trouble their future colleagues at Ferrari Classiche and the historians!
If interested, I’ll be happy of discussing also this point in our Modena meeting. BTW, arranging such a workshop is not terribly complicated, but times goes quickly and considering all the problems related to communication and organization, starting with checking dates with the Museum, I guess we have to move, establishing if a sufficient number of interested persons might join a group of Italians, more easily available.
Not to bother too much this Forum (although some information will be given here in the future), having started the idea of this meeting, I warmly volunteer to handle all the contacts. Let me suggest you to contact me directly at my mail [email protected], as a few few other persons who have already expressed their willingness to join the fun. This is particularly directed to you, Bjoern, as the possibility of having 4502 in Modena should help a lot. Please, confirm your presence.
I urge all of you to get in touch now and offer a spectrum of dates (second half of February?), or better, indicating when unable to attend in that period.
In the meantime, who knows, some information on 3503 might start to surface…

 

Ooohps! my correct mail is [email protected]. Sorry

 

Doug,
Thanks!
It was and still is a typical behavior in the Italian automotive industry:
2 steps forward and then 1 step backwards!

Alfieri designed a very complex V12 and failed! And then he went to the brutish 450S V8 and
Was successfull until this engine was killed by the FIA!

 

Franco,
This is just a personal opinion, but I would think that your best position on the car would be as chassis #3501 "450S prototipo/muletto" with a 450S engine in the body style that it carried at the Swedish GP in 1956 (Big hood buldge and stub exhausts). I think it has a great history as the 1st 350S racing in the MM with Moss/Jenkinson, then becoming the prototipo 450S testing in Sweden in 1956.

Even if SpA gives permission to number the car as #4501. It doesn't need the #4501 history of a DNF in Argentina and having to explain why the chassis was listed as destroyed by Behra practicing for the '57 MM.

All that does is add doubt to the history of the car for anyone that (actually has a life) doesn't dig deeply into the fine details like we do. As #3501 its history is simple and clean, "Sold in 1965 as chassis 350S no 10."

I know a lot of time and money has gone into the restoration for its current configuration, so it really isn't feasible to change things to the prototipo/mulleto coachwork at this time.

If it ever has to undergo another restoration consider returning it the Swedish GP configuration, for now enjoy the car as is, knowing that you have an interesting piece of Maserati history.

 

Thanks for your post, Joe,
You see, in 1982/83, at the start of the car restoration in Modena, we were confronted with the problem of its configuration. Should 3501>4501 be restored as a 350S or a 450S? Consider that a complete 350S engine was then available at a reasonable cost on the shelves of the Ditta Orsi, among several other ex works spares. Nevertheless, after inspecting the car, Aurelio Bertocchi (Guarino’s son and then the company’s managing director) strongly advised for the second alternative, for a reason that seemed decisive. We had a genuine Maserati chassis that had fortunately not been messed about to accommodate the American V8. Had we wanted to, we could have returned it to the initial 350S configuration, but that would have meant cutting the chassis that had been lengthened to accommodate the 8-cylinder Tipo 54 engine. That episode had taken place one Sunday morning at the beginning of the summer way back in 1956 on the orders of engineer Giulio Alfieri. Aurelio Bertocchi was reminded of that fact by the chassis man of the time, who was still working for Maserati and who recalled the situation perfectly. “It is the 450S prototype and I believe you should restore as such”, he said. These are the reasons leading the Factory to include my car in the 450S listing (and leading me to start searching for a 450S engine).
You might have a point in suggesting that the car could have been opportunely restored in the configuration that it carried at the Swedish GP in 1956 (Big hood bulge and stub exhausts). Yes, that might be a mistake. To day we are a lot more careful in terms of utmost respect for originality. Thirty years ago things were a bit different. Moreover I was again convinced by Aurelio Bertocchi’s words: “Stub exhausts? You must be joking! You wouldn’t be able to start the engine without tearing apart all the windows in your neighbourhood!”

 

My response to that probably would have been "REALLY..... how quickly can we have them installed?"

 

Remember that in those days - 1956, I mean - Bertocchi and the drivers occasionally tested the works cars being readied at the Modena Autodromo starting before 6:00 AM. And nobody complained too much!

 

And not only that. Maserati tested the 450S also on public roads, passing the Ferrari factory in Maranello - and made ol'' Enzo going to orbit....!

Aloha from the Sun!

 

Maserati and sheer decibels went together in 1956-57. Both Jenks and Lella Coltrin, Pete's wife, told me how night-time Modena would ring to the background din of the V12 and V8 bawling their lungs out until 2 or 3am on the factory testbed... Those chaps were prepared to work every hour that God gave them.

Just as real Racers anywhere in the world will still do today...

DCN

 

Lombardi,
What excuse then do you have for the 1959 Le Mans failure by Ferrari reportedly caused by overheating due to the fact that the mechanics could not be bothered installing the correct differential ratios ... http://www.ultimate car page.com/car/859/Ferrari-250-TR59-60.html you will have to remove spaces to use this link.

Aston Martin won because of those mechanics ... they should have lost their $60,000 lira job and been sacked.
Pete

 

Well: you win some, you lose some. One of the honourable defeats (several in 1959)?

 

old Borsari told me some years ago that, while he was working on a factory-300S, Omer Orsi with a customer came to him and said: "Borsari, take care now of the car of this customer!" So he had to stopp working on the works-300S and started to work on the customer car. 2 days later both cars were DNFs......

They constantly needed cash and their race preparation was quite often very poor!

 

Help, please, on a different matter.
I am trying to locate a good photo of a naked rear area of the A6GCS chassis, essentially showing how the rear axle was located by an “A” frame with a single spherical bushed pivot anchored under the differential casing and attached by two spherical bushed pivots to the chassis frame below a single similarly bushed trailing arm on each side.
I remember seeing official photos showing that detail and that area in period Maserati brochures, but my Maserati archive is at the moment in a total mess and some help might be appreciated.
You may also use my E-mail previously listed. Thanks.
F.L.

 

One of the best threads that I ever saw. Thank you very much gentlemen. Now what's under #3503 ? Some people have the opportunity to inspect real cars. Many others can only compare photos.
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I assume that the car has an original V12 under the bonnet. It was the engine that Klaus Werner had for many years in his 250F.
I saw the engine more than once and it was originally stamped "3503".

Compared to the original photo on the left a mistake around the front section around the radiator grill was made by the panel beater:

the holes for brake cooling are positioned too high, caused by a little too long nose of the car.

Beside this the car looks fantastic!