1960 Maserati Tipo 61 “Birdcage”

Across the annals of automotive history, few families can lay claim to more engineering genius than that of Rudolfo and Carolina Maserati. Between 1880 and 1898, Carolina gave birth to no less than six sons, Carlo, Bindo, Alfieri, Mario, Ettore, and Ernesto. All but one would go on to design and build remarkable racecars. Yet, even the odd man out—Mario, an accomplished artist—would leave his mark on the automotive world by designing the now-famous trident of Neptune logo that would grace the nose of every car to ever carry the Maserati name.

The first car to formerly carry the Maserati name was in fact a Diatto, modified by Alfieri Maserati in 1926. Alfieri himself drove this Tipo 26 to a class victory in the 1926 Targa Florio, instantly linking the Maserati name with speed and performance. After Alfieri’s untimely death in 1932, surviving brothers Bindo, Ernesto, and Ettore went on to design and build a steady stream of competitive single-seat racecars under the Officine Alfieri Maserati name. However, by 1937, the brothers grew weary of the difficulties of running a business in post-WWI Italy and so sold the Maserati name to Italian industrialist Adolfo Orsi, under the term that they would stay on for the next 10 years as consultants, to continue to guide the design and engineering of Maserati.