Before the Tipo 61 Birdcages came out, the 450S was just about my favorite sports racer. Carroll Shelby and Billy Krause drove John Edgar's car, along with a few others. Jim Hall had one, and bored it out from 4.5 to 5.7 liters. I saw him hit the traps at the end of the 1 mile back straight at Riverside at 181 mph - wow! They were a handful to drive though, but were definitely a Ferrari beater. That's why Enzo supported the Group 7 change in 1958 to a 3.0 liter maximum displacement, which obsoleted these cars after only 1 year, enabling Ferrari to hold onto to the Manufacturer's Championship (which then was decided by sports racers, not Formula 1). Thus, due to the financial loss, Maserati never came back as a factory team, and when they finally built the successful Birdcages, they only supported privateer teams. Chalk one up for Enzo, but the loss of a great Italian racing team.
Here are a couple of pictures of the most successful chassis, 4503, that I took at Laguna Seca in 2007 -
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It won the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1957 at the hands of Juan Manual Fangio and Jean Behra -
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Fangio
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Behra
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Behra then crashed it in practice for the Mille Miglia and again at Le Mans, but it won again at the Swedish Sports Car Grand Prix in the hands of Stirling Moss and Behra. It was then destroyed at the last race - in Venezuela (but subsequently rebuilt and restored for vintage racing)
For more information, see -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maserati_450S
