Optimal Balance, Finesse and Power
The Great Maserati Birdcage

Ask Maseratisti what the most famous Maserati racing car is, and the most common answer will be the 250F  - hardly surprising, given that for many people, the 250F was the greatest front-engined grand prix car of all time. It won multiple races, including the 1957 German Grand Prix, often ranked as the greatest race ever, and it carried Juan Manuel Fangio to his fifth and final Formula One World Championship in 1957. Two years later Giulio Alfieri, the chief engineer, took the lessons learned from the 250F and devised another car which would become just as synonymous with the Trident, and just as great a motorsports legend: the Tipo 60, universally known as the 'Birdcage'.

The nickname came from the complex lattice of thin tubes, between 10mm and 15mm in diameter, that made up the chassis; over 200 separate tubes were required. The joke was that they built the chassis up until a bird was trapped within it – given the space between the tubes, we can only speculate that a full-grown turkey would have to be used!

The whole industry was moving towards what was known as 'monocoque' design for the chassis, but Maserati had good reason for resisting. The second version of the 250F, the T2, had used just such a chassis – technically a reticular space frame – to combine great strength with lightness. Using the same technique for a sports racing car was a natural extension, and yet another demonstration of the engineering excellence for which the company was, and is, renowned. The result was a chassis which was light, yet had exceptional torsional rigidity - a vital quality in all racing cars. A car that flexes excessively is both more liable to breaking down and can also handle unpredictably due to the combination of chassis movement and suspension travel.

While the era of front-engined grand prix cars would soon be over, sports cars still mounted the engine ahead of the driver. The Tipo 60 was designed to optimize the handling of the car, using a variety of techniques. The engine, based on the tried and tested straight-four 2-liter, had the cylinder head thoroughly reworked to make 200 bhp. The whole engine was mounted as far back as possible to optimize the weight distribution – something the Birdcage has in common with all current road going Maseratis. And to reduce the frontal area (and thus aerodynamic drag) and also to lower the center of gravity, the engine block was tilted over at a radical 45 degrees.

The first chassis encountered a most unusual problem – the materials used by Maserati were too strong! High quality chrome steel tubing was used for the chassis to provide maximum rigidity - but that very rigidity caused problems. Soon after the first chassis began testing, cracks were noticed around some of the numerous welds that formed the chassis. Ing. Giulio Alfieri, the technical mastermind at Maserati, took what appeared to be a retrograde step, building a chassis out of steel tubes of much lower quality. It proved to be exactly what was required, the tubes now absorbed the stresses without compromising rigidity.

In America, the series run by the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) had a 3-liter capacity limit; to meet the transatlantic demand, the Tipo 61 used an identical chassis to the Tipo 60, with the engine bored out to the maximum possible. That took the capacity to 2.9 liters, and power up to 250bhp. It is worth noting that the model designations do not indicate the year of production – six Tipo 60 models were produced in 1959 and 1960, while seventeen Tipo 61 cars (including one converted from a Tipo 60) were built between 1959 and 1961.

The Maserati factory team had withdrawn from motor racing, so the Birdcage was sold to privateers, although with full support from the factory. The car was an immediate success, taking a win at Rouen in 1959 with Stirling Moss at the wheel. It was driven by some of the great drivers of the era; besides Moss, Dan Gurney, Jim Hall and Roger Penske all raced Birdcages. In fact, Carrol Shelby took the final win of his distinguished career in a Birdcage back in 1961, in Los Angeles.

Carrol Shelby, 1961

The move towards locating the engine behind the driver, which offered the advantages of a simplified drive train and more weight over the rear wheels for improved traction, resulted in the development of the next generation of Birdcage, the Tipo 63. The new car looked just as striking and distinctive as its predecessor. This time the four-cylinder engine was leant over at an even more dramatic 58 degrees, resulting in the rear deck behind the cockpit actually being lower than the top of the large Plexiglas windscreen. Showing that the original had been just about perfect from the beginning, the major dimensions of the car – wheelbase, front and rear track, wheel sizes – remained virtually unchanged. Even more remarkably, the chassis also accepted the 3-liter V12 engine from the 250F T2 grand prix car.

The new car showed its potential in the 1961 Le Mans 24 Hours race, where a Tipo 63 entered by Briggs Cunningham and raced by Augie Pabst and Richard Thompson came home fourth. Cunningham himself, partnered by William Kimberley, finished eighth in a Tipo 60 Birdcage. Revisions at the end of 1961 reduced the car’s weight, resulting in an astounding top speed of some 200mph.

The MC12 supercar, which has powered the Vitaphone Racing team to multiple titles in the FIA GT Championship, also has its V12 engine mounted behind the cockpit. As previously mentioned, both the Quattroporte and GranTurismo road cars have their engines mounted entirely behind the front axle line, exactly the same technique used to give the original Birdcage such stellar handling characteristics. And the GranTurismo MC racing car, scheduled to make its debut in the FIA GT4 European Cup later this year, demonstrates that the Modena factory remains committed to motorsports. Whether designed for road or track, Maserati cars have always been objects of desire.