Maserati
Feature: Inside Maserati
August 1, 2005
Oh-so-Italian exotic carmaker Maserati has seen ups and downs, changes of
ownership and eras of greatness and less-than-greatness. Now, the marque is
moving back under the management of parent company Fiat Auto, to be teamed with
Alfa Romeo, another legendary brand, and ending a productive eight-year
partnership with Ferrari.
All are owned by Fiat SpA, which purchased Maserati in 1993 and transferred
half-ownership to Ferrari four years later. The first new-generation Maserati,
the 370 hp twin-turbo V-8—powered 3200 GT, followed in 1998, and Ferrari assumed
full control in 1999.
THE HERITAGE
Five of the six Maserati brothers, sons of a railway engineer, were incorrigible
car nuts. As the Italian auto business grew in the early years of the 20th
century, so did they–into talented tuners, mechanics, engineers, and racers, who
fixed and drove other people’s cars. Then Alfieri Maserati teamed with brothers
Bindo and Ernesto to found his own tiny shop, Officina Alfieri Maserati, in
Bologna on December 1, 1914. They prepared and raced cars for former employer
Isotta Fraschini until 1919, when they switched to a car company called Diatto
and younger brother Ernesto joined the fledgling firm. Elder brother Carlo, who
raced both motorcycles and cars, had died in 1911.
The partnership flourished following World War I, until Diatto decided to quit
racing in 1926. [It later went out of business.] The brothers could have folded
their tent and found employment elsewhere, or gone looking for another client to
keep them afloat. Instead, they quickly transformed the loss of Diatto into the
birth of the Maserati legend. They incorporated the company that year and built
a new 1.5-liter Type 26 racer. At its first competition, the grueling 1926 Targa
Florio race, with Alfieri at the wheel, it won its class and finished ninth
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The “Boyle Special,” driven to victory in the 1939 Indianapolis 500 by Wilbur
Shaw. (Click image to enlarge)
Meanwhile, the sixth brother, Marco, followed a different muse and became an
artist. In 1925, inspired by the statue of the Roman god Neptune in Bologna’s
Piazza Maggiore, he designed the bold and beautiful trident logo that graced the
front of that first victorious Type 26 racer and every Maserati automobile
since.
After Alfieri died in 1932, Bindo, Ernesto, and Ettore kept the company going
and winning races until, five years later, they sold their shares to the Orsi
family while retaining responsibility for the technical side. In 1939, Wilbur
Shaw drove the Tipo CTF “Boyle Special” Maserati to a landmark victory in the
Indianapolis 500, and repeated the following year. Also during this time, the
Orsis moved the firm from Bologna to their hometown of Modena, where it remains
to this day.
In 1947, following World War II, Maserati debuted its first road-going coupe,
the Pininfarina-bodied A6 1500 Sport. A few others followed, while the company
concentrated mostly on winning races, though probably no more than 130
streetable Maseratis were built prior to 1957. The legendary Argentinian driver
Juan Manuel Fangio drove Formula One Maseratis to a string of grand prix
victories in the 1950s, culminating in the 1957 World Championship in the 250F.
After that, the company retired from factory competition to focus on road cars
while continuing to build racers for privateers, most notably the famous Tipo
60/61 and Tipo 63 “Birdcage” Maseratis (so named because of their complex
tubular frame) that dominated international sports-car racing in the early
1960s.
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