1957 Maserati 150 GT Spider
Offered by Gooding & Company | Scottsdale, Arizona | January 18-19, 2013
This is one of the best looking Maserati road car convertibles I’ve ever seen. Part of the reason for this is that this is the only one like it I’ve ever seen as it was the only one ever made. It began life as a A6GCS, Maserati’s 2.0-liter race car built from 1953 through 1955. It was a Maserati team car and after the 1954 season, it returned to the factory where the chassis was used for the prototype 300S, with the 3.0-liter six. The 300S went into production and Maserati then turned to the 150S race car, which used a 1.5-liter four.
With production of the race-bred 150S well under way, Maserati turned to developing a road car variant. They pulled this chassis back in, stripped it of the 300S bits and strapped the 1.4-liter four in from the 150S, a transmission from the A6GCS (in current form this car makes about 195 horsepower and weighs less than 2,000 lbs). Then they shipped the car to Fantuzzi, who constructed this incredible convertible body.
Due to things that seem obvious now – the price being “prohibitive” (it was a one-off, of course it was expensive) and it being a poor handler/performer on the road (again, it was a prototype and was never properly tuned – parts were just thrown on it and bodied to show off to the public) – Maserati shelved it and production never started. Instead, the company started development of the legendary 3500 GT.
This car was forgotten about and sold to a dealer in the U.K. in 1960 who kept it until the 1980s when it was sold to a German collector, who owned it until 2007. The new owner found the car with red paint and a relatively unknown history that was, at best, confusing. He did some research and discovered just what this car was. It was then properly restored and repainted to this lovely cream color. And now Gooding & Company estimate that this car will bring somewhere between $3,000,000-$4,000,000. Quite a find. For more information check out Gooding’s site.
Update: Sold $3,080,000.
Reblogged this on brianlegere424.
Christmas Greetiings MAy the peace and good will Of Christmas be with you Thrcugheul the year John Henry Williams
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