This time, the Maserati car company is celebrating its 100th anniversary.
And to celebrate the favorable occasion, a number of of the finest examples self-control be shipped from the complete corners of the world to be displayed at various trial during Monterey, Calif. car week Aug. 1117.
During the 70s and 80s, Maserati sales werent exactly successful, nevertheless today they are back and building a number of very exciting sports cars and luxury sedans powered by big sounding Ferrari engines.
The Maserati brothers had the constant origins as Ferrari namely, building racing cars.
The company was founded in December of 1914 in Bologna, nevertheless the first Maserati race car was built in 1926 and won the Tara Florio that constant time.
By 1957 the big Juan Guide Fangio had lifted the Italian car builder to big heights with many racing victories, with the ultimate reward, the Formula One World Championship, driving the Tipo 250F.
Though, instead of celebrating, Maserati was filing for bankruptcy. The Orsi Empire that then owned the company was on the edge of monetary disaster.
A change of trend was requisite and quickly, so obtainable went the racing program and in came a blanket move toward road-car production. By then the company had moved its headquarters to Modena, where it remains today.
The saviour was their first mass-produced road car, the 3500GT, which debuted at the 1957 Geneva Motor Fair.
Maseratis project good breeding. Ferraris seem gauche by comparison. A suitable sister car for the Maserati would be an Aston Martin DB4. Both marques shared the constant construction and coachbuilder, Touring of Milan.
Touring pioneered the Superleggera process, which complicated attaching aluminum panels to a steel-tube entice. The overall effect was a very light nevertheless rigid body.The 3.5-litre, 220-horsepower, twin-cam, six-cylinder engine, coupled to a four-speed ZF gearbox and a Salisbury differential, made for a perfect combination.
They were certainly not inexpensive the $12,300 sticker price in the beforehand 60s was the cost of a house, with the lot.
The plan worked. Touring produced 1,973 coupes for Maserati during a seven-year period.
You could purchase a used Maserati 3500GT in the mid-1970s for approximately $5,000.
Those time are lengthy gone, and with the price of front-engine Ferraris obtainable of reach for on the whole, the Maserati is a bargain now advertising in the $200,000 range. Reckoning on that price to continue to climb, anticipated to supply and demand.
Nigel Matthews is the chief of sales and marketing for Hagerty Canada, LLC. Hagerty is the worlds largest specialist bringer of collector car cover and provides many property that support the classic car lifestyle. Call him at nmatthews@hagerty.com or visit hagerty.ca.
