The First Supercar: The V16 Maserati
Tipo V4 Zagato Gran Turismo is One of a Kind

The first car ever to bear the famous Trident logo was the Tipo 26 – as its name suggests, it was first released in 1926. The engine, like the rest of the car, was designed with a single purpose – to go racing. The straight-eight featured dry-sump lubrication and gear-drive to the two overhead camshafts; in keeping with the Grand Prix regulations of the time, it was just under 1.5 liters, yet made an impressive 120 hp through supercharging.

Over the next three years the Maserati brothers released several variations on the Tipo 26, all with the same engine – but by varying the bore and stroke, capacities varied from as little as 1.1 liters up to 2 liters. What the Maserati brothers did next was sensational, and shocked the motoring world: using two straight-eight blocks, they created a 16-cylinder, 4-liter engine putting out 280 hp.

A normal Vee engine, such as the V8 engine used in every modern Maserati, has a single crankshaft, with two banks of cylinders running off it; in the current Maserati engine, there is a 90° angle between the two banks. What Maserati did with the 16 cylinder engine was a much greater feat of engineering; the two straight-eight units were combined with a single crankcase, but retaining two separate crankshafts, with only a 25° angle between the two banks. Keeping what are, in effect, two separate engines synchronized is a hugely complicated task, and the brothers called on the skills of Edoardo Weber, the Bologna carburetion expert and owner of the company that still bears his name. Weber crafted a carburetion system custom-designed for the mighty engine.

In some ways the Tipo V4 story is reminiscent of the MC12’s, though these roadgoing supercars are separated by over 70 years of history and development.  The intricate engine (can something with two crankshafts be correctly described as a V16?)  was installed in a chassis which had to be extensively adapted and strengthened to cope with the enormous power output; the brakes had to be upgraded to handle a car which weighed just over one ton – some 440 lbs more than the heaviest Tipo 26. It was named the V4, denoting the shape and size of the engine, and it proved astonishingly fast; in September 1929 it set a new record for cars up to 5 liters over 10km with a flying start, averaging 152.9mph. That was more than 6mph quicker than the previous record, and it set a benchmark which would not be beaten for eight years. In 1930 it even took part in the Indianapolis 500; however, since the rules for that race meant the superchargers had to be removed, it was not competitive.

In 1931 Maserati constructed a second V4 – this appears to have been an interim model, because the following year this second chassis was used for the V5. As indicated by the name, the engine’s capacity had grown to five liters by increasing the bore; this took power to somewhere in the region of 350 hp, endowing the V5 with a top speed of around 165mph. The car was ideally suited for setting further speed records – but in preparation for doing so, the car was crashed and the attempt had to be aborted. And in 1934, with Piero Taruffi at the wheel, the car was crashed again in the Tripoli Grand Prix; the driver escaped serious injury but the car was not so lucky, and the V5 was written off.

That wasn’t quite the end of the V4/V5 story, because Count Theo Rossi di Montelera decided the mighty engine would be ideal to power his speedboat. This must have been an impressively large speedboat – because Rossi used two of the monster 16-cylinder engines, mounted side-by-side for a total of 32 cylinders!

Remarkably, the original V4 has survived; after the Zagato bodywork was added it was sold by the factory to an owner living just north of Rome. Just before the Second World War it was sold again, and driven to its new owner in Brussels – by the legendary Tazio Nuvolari. It seems that Nuvolari hadn’t been given all the paperwork for the car, and ended up being arrested! Meanwhile the car was stripped down and packed away, and may have spent the war years in Holland. After the war it was rebuilt and found its way to England, where it was again used for racing, including competing in the Brighton Speed Trials in 1952. However a major engine blow-up in 1956 sidelined the car for decades; a mechanical restoration took place in the late 1990s, and the car was then shipped to the United States to have the bodywork restored.

Today, this unique Maserati, one of the oldest still in existence, is owned by Lawrence Auriana, who generously allowed us access to it - all for a good cause. Lawrence is Chairman of the Columbus Citizens Foundation, which is raffling off a pair of 2009 Maseratis to support their charitable efforts, as described elsewhere in this issue. In its early record-breaking guise it was effectively open-wheeled, but in 1931 it was turned into a practical road car with a spider body designed and built by Ugo Zagato; two enormous headlights sat in front of the radiator grille, and the front fenders swooped down to form running boards alongside the cockpit before rising to cover the rear wheels. Lawrence’s car still has that body, and took pride of place in the 2007 Columbus Day Parade in New York, thundering through Manhattan. Interestingly, The Tipo V4 doesn’t exactly thunder when you are up close to it.  The sculpted exhausts headers - which look tiny by today’s standards - join to pipes that muffle the engine note quite effectively.  Nothing muffles the superchargers, however, and their whine becomes a roar as engine speed builds.  Not what a modern car enthusiast expects from a modern supercar, the sound of Maserati’s V16 – in the manner of the GranTurismo S V8 - is nonetheless unforgettable! 

As you might expect with such a unique car, the V4 is in immaculate condition. The two-tone green paintwork sets off the swooping lines of the Zagato body perfectly; even the wire wheels have been painted green. Detail touches abound; the angle of the flat glass windshield can be adjusted, and the two spring-loaded wipers will continue to work. The twin exhausts terminate in matt black fishtails, while the only indication of the unusual nature of the engine is in the cockpit, where there are two water temperature gauges. Interestingly the rev counter is in front of the driver (the car is right-hand drive), while the speedometer is in front of the passenger seat.

There is also a V5 in existence – although none of it came from the V5 built by the factory. Despite an almost total absence of documentation an Italian enthusiast set about lovingly recreating the car, in the guise in which it started its final race; the engine is an original, being one of the two used by Count Rossi in his speedboat.

While only two cars were built, the V4 and V5 story is a fascinating one; it illustrates that, just as today, Maserati has been synonymous with cutting-edge technology and supercars right from its earliest years.