Maserati 450S: A Bazooka from Modena

"When she didn't break, she won". The Maserati 450S, also called Tipo 54 in the factory codification, was the fastest and most powerful of the Maserati built to face the arch-rival Ferrari in the World Sports Car Championship of the 1957 season which constituted the apotheosis of the golden age of motor racing. Fitted with the powerful Maserati 4.5 Liter V8 engine and dressed in an elegant bodywork by Fantuzzi, it was the "lethal weapon" that was to allow Maserati to win the 1957 Sportscar World Championship.

Nicknamed "Bazooka", the 450S became also the most tragic race car that Maserati ever build: it won in Sebring and Sweden, totally failed at the Mille Miglia, at the Nürburgring and in Le Mans culminating in a grotesque and disastrous race in Venezuela, leaving all laurels to Ferrari. Then it became obsolete in Europe due to a change of the FIA regulations for 1958.

Emigrated to the USA, the Maserati 450S started its other race career with owners such as Tony Parravano, Jim Kimberly, John Edgar, Temple Buell, Ebb Rose and Frank Harrison. The 450S then won many races in the USA at the hands of the best US drivers like Carroll Shelby, Jim Hall, Masten Gregory, Dan Gurney, Lloyd Ruby and Bill Krause, and so became a very important part of the US race history in the 1950s.

This book retraces the saga of the ten Maserati 450S “Bazookas” built and their eventful lives, chassis by chassis, illustrated with an exceptional iconography of over 200 period photos, most of which have never been published before.