Maserati Birdcage

I took this photograph at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in 1996 of these three Maseratis that are generally referred to as 'birdcage' cars because of the intricate tubing that makes up the chassis of the car.

On the left, car number 37 is the 1960 Maserati T61 of Tony Smith which has a 4-cylinder inline 2,890cc engine and is chassis 2470. Next to it car 38 is a similar 1959 T61 of Valentine Lindsay which was driven in the race by Stirling Moss and is chassis 2453. The programme of the event shows car 39 to be the identical T61 of Nick Mason, but the car pictured is actually the 1961 Maserati T63 of Edmond Pery, chassis 63002 and apparently has a 3 litre V12 engine. The red car behind the T63 is the 1930/31 Maserati T26 of Anthony Hartley which is chassis 2518 and has an 8-cylinder inline 2½ litre engine.

1929 Maserati V4 'Sedici Cilindri' Replica

In 1929 the Maserati brothers conceived the idea of mating two 2-litre Maserati 26B straight-8 engines side-by-side in a common crankcase coupled to a central driveshaft to create the 3,961cc sixteen cylinder Maserati V4. In September 1929 the car was driven by Baconin Borzacchini in Cremona to set a new 10 mile International Class C World Speed record of 246.07 km/h (152.93 mph). The following year Baconin Borzacchni gave the car its first win in the Tripoli Grand Prix, and it was then taken to the USA for the Indianapolis 500 race but retired with a broken magneto early in the race. For the remainder of the 1930 European Grand Prix season its best result was third place in the Monza Grand Prix driven by Ernesto Maserati. The car never lived up to its promise because the of problems with tyre and brake wear caused by the power developed by the twin engines and it is believed that only two cars were built. The car below, photographed at the SeeRed meeting at Donington Park featuring the Maserati marque in September 2005 is a replica of the Maserati V4 built by Anthony Hartley requiring some 20,000 hours of work over several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s.