On Sunday, 4 September, under partly sunny skies Seattle honored Maserati and enjoyed the unique beauty and sound of the Italian automobile and motorcycle at the fourteenth annual Italian Concours d’ Elegance at South Lake Union Park next to the Center for Wooden Boats. Maserati held the featured spot but other marques represented included automobiles: Alfa Romeo, DeTomaso, Ferrari, Fiat, Iso, Laforza, Lamborghini, and Lancia, and motorbikes: Ducati, Gilera, Moto Guzzi, and Lambretta.

From their humble beginnings as a manufacturer of spark plugs and high voltage ignition systems, in 1914 the Maserati brothers built a foundation for the company that we know today. The Maserati story begins back in 1900 when Carlo Maserati strapped a 2.75 HP engine to a Carcano bicycle and finished 6th in the Padua-Bovolenta race behind Vencinzo Lancia and Ettore Bugatti, who would also go on to found their own respective automobile companies. For the next 14 years the Maserati brothers would work for Fiat, race for Bianchi (with a 120 HP, 8 liter engine!), build radial engines for aircraft and race for Isotta Fraschini before actually designing and building the first model to bear their name.

With spark plugs and a service shop being their primary business, on December 1, 1914, the Maserati brothers set off on their own and filed official documents with the Italian government to become a business entity. The birth of the Maserati as we know it today happened at the start of the Targa Florio in 1926 when Alfieri Maserati introduced and raced the first car to bear the now famous trident, the Tipo 26; and what an entrance it was with Alfieri finishing 1st in class and 9th overall. Throughout the years Maserati has been a force to be reckoned with. With their domination of the Formula 1 season in 1957 with Juan Manuel Fangio behind the wheel of the Tipo 250F, to the ground-pounding V8 of the mighty 450S in road racing, Maserati always put a twinge of fear into the likes of Alfa, Ferrari, Mercedes, Auto Union, Aston Martin and Jaguar.
 

At the end of the 1957 racing season Maserati announced that it would no longer race, but would continue designing and building GT cars. Maserati began with the assumption that a performance car did not have to be noisy, difficult to drive and equipped with only the bare necessities. This philosophy gave birth to a new concept that would go on to achieve worldwide recognition - the Grand Tourer. The first GT car produced for the public was the 1957 3500GT. Maserati then went on to build seven more GT models which include Sebring, 5000GT, Quattroporte, Mistal, Mexico, Ghibli and Indy.

Despite Maserati’s featured position, David Smith’s Alfa 6C2500 Competizione, the only survivor of the three built and freshly back from finishing second in the Postwar Alfa Sports Racing class at Pebble Beach, drew the greatest attention It was originally purchased by Italian Franco Rol who drove it in the Mille Miglia four times, finishing third in 1949 after leading most of the way from Rome. It also took part in the Targa Florio and Dolomite Cup and won at Pescara. The Alfa then spent almost forty years stored under a lean-to in the Sleeping Beauties collection depicted in Automobile Quarterly. Smith found it in the back of an Alfa dealership in Belgium. It managed to remain in hiding to the Seattle Alfa intelligencia, missing at the month earlier Alfa Romeo Owner’s Club National Convention. As a late entry to this event it had no mention in the program and sat unceremoniously between a pair of Alfa 164s. Between the 6C2500 and the Ferrari 340/375 MM the event has started to reach beyond it’s casual status.

by Dave Emerson