“When she didn’t break, she won.” That’s the frustrating summary of the career of Maserati’s big, booming 450S, the Modena firm’s contender in the 1957 World Sportscar Championship. Scarily fast, and scarily wayward, it veered unpredictably between beating the pants off everyone else and breaking, or crashing, or breaking and crashing as even Stirling Moss had cause to discover.
Equipped with a monster 4.5-litre engine, the 450 in its swoopy Fantuzzi bodywork was built to take the fight to Ferrari but only had one erratic European season filled with frustrations before being sidelined by a rules change. But the USA had its own rules, and after Fangio and Behra proved its potential by beating everyone at Sebring, the States finally provided a happy hunting ground for this 400hp well-bred brute.…
