Tall, quiet-spoken and modest Giulio Alfieri, one of the greatest motor racing engineers of the 20th century, died on March 20th, at the age of 77. Arguably, he was the man who did more than almost anyone to help create the Maserati legend.
The son of an accountant, Giulio Alfieri was born in Parma on July 10, 1924, and graduated in mechanical engineering from the Milan Polytechnic in 1948. In 1949, he joined Innocenti, the Milan car manufacturer – and the motor industry had acquired a budding genius.
Photo: Robert Newman
In 1953, Alfieri met Camillo Donati, Commendatore Adolfo Orsi’s lawyer, and was told the man who bought Maserati from the famous brothers in 1937 was looking for a bright young engineer – so 25-year old Giulio applied for the job and got it.
At 30 years old, Giulio Alfieri started developing arguably the most beautiful Formula One racing car of its age, the six-cylinder Maserati 250F, with which Juan Manuel Fangio won part of his 1954 F1 World Championship and all of his 1957 title. Alfieri was also responsible for the Maserati 300S and 450S racers, but will be best remembered on the sports car front for the Maserati Tipo 60/61, with its famous “birdcage-like” chassis of criss-crossed small-diameter tubes.
VRJ last met up with Giulio Alfieri at scrutineering for the 2000 Mille Miglia Historica. A quiet-spoken man who shunned his own greatness, Alfieri told VRJ he quite liked to see the cars he designed in the ’50s back in the limelight at such an event almost 50 years later…but no more than that. Yet when the photographers and TV cameramen pleaded with him, he still climbed behind the wheel of a blood-red 300S and sat there with a hint of pride in his eyes and that characteristically modest smile on his lips.
Submitted by Robert Newman
