Maserati's Eldorado GT2 Stradale honours a racer that never won
Maserati's centenary liveries move from Fangio's 250F to Moss's ice-cream car
The Trident's hundredth birthday is being marked in paint. The first commemorative livery went on the GT2 race car at Monza in May and copied Fangio's 250F. The second appeared on 9 September at the third Tutto Bene Hillclimb above Lake Maggiore: the cream-white Eldorado scheme of 1958, on a one-off GT2 and a limited run of GT2 Stradale road cars, with the original 420/M/58 parked alongside.
Eldorado ice cream funded Europe's first sponsored single-seater in 1958
The Eldorado exists because Maserati had stopped paying for racing. The factory withdrew its works team at the end of 1957, the year Fangio won it the title, as the Orsi family's finances collapsed. Gino Zanetti, who owned the Eldorado ice-cream company, then commissioned a single-seater for the 500 Miles of Monza on the condition that it wore his colours instead of Italian racing red. Chassis 4203 was painted cream white, with Eldorado down each flank, the smiling cowboy on the nose and Stirling Moss's number 10. Formula 1 did not follow until Lotus painted its cars in Gold Leaf cigarette colours in 1968, ten years later.
A 4,190 cc V8 with 410 hp in a 758 kg car built for the Monza banking
The 420/M/58 was a sports-car engine in a single-seater built for one circuit. The 90-degree V8 came from the 450S, taken to 4,190 cc for 410 hp at 8,000 rpm. Maserati quoted 350 km/h and 758 kg. Because Monza's banked oval only asked for flat-out running, the car had a two-speed gearbox with first reserved for leaving the pits, and a De Dion rear axle with no differential at all.
Monza 1958: fourth, fifth, then a steering failure at 250 km/h
The Race of Two Worlds on 29 June 1958 pitted Europe's cars against the Indianapolis roadsters over three heats. Moss took fourth in the first and fifth in the second. On lap 41 of the third the steering broke on the banking at around 250 km/h and the car hit the barriers; Moss walked away and later called it the most frightening accident of his career. He was classified seventh overall. Rebuilt and repainted red for the 1959 Indianapolis 500, the car was entered for Ralph Liguori and failed to qualify. Two entries, one crash, no wins: that is the whole competition record of the car Maserati now calls iconic.
From Panini's Hombre farm to a 9 km untimed climb up Mottarone
The car on the grass at Mottarone came from the Collezione Maserati Umberto Panini, and it owes its survival to a rescue. In 1996 Alejandro de Tomaso, then Maserati's owner, consigned 19 cars from the factory collection to a Brooks auction in London set for 2 December. Umberto Panini bought the lot before it left Italy and moved the cars to his Hombre farm outside the city, where the Eldorado was restored to its original white. Tutto Bene itself runs 9 km up the private Borromea road with no timing, sanctioned by the Automobile Club d'Italia as an 'atypical experimental demonstration', with 85 invited cars this year and an MC20 Cielo as Maserati's own entry on the climb.
The GT2 Stradale gets the paint on a 640 hp car capped at 914 units, now €311,600
The road car underneath is the GT2 Stradale, the 640 hp, 1,365 kg dry version of the MC20 that Maserati limits to 914 examples, and whose one-off MC12 tribute was already shown in July. The Mottarone car adds a black bonnet carrying the original Tipo 26 badge, exposed carbon and black centre-lock wheels. Maserati has not said how many Eldorado cars it will paint or what the option costs. What it has done, quietly, is cut the GT2 Stradale's Italian list price from €383,900 for the 2024 model year to €311,600 for 2025, according to Quattroruote's price list, while the brand's sales fell to 11,127 cars in 2025 and Stellantis talks to outside partners about its future.
AutoNext Take
Ice cream paid for the Eldorado because Maserati could not, and that is the real reason it belongs on a 2026 anniversary car. The parallel with today is honest: a brand that sold 11,127 cars last year, has one halo product in the GT2 Stradale, and is repainting it for the second time in three months. A livery costs a fraction of a model programme and buys the same headlines, which is why the centenary has so far produced two paint schemes and no new car.
Maserati calls the Eldorado the second act, which promises a third before the Trident's centenary ends on 31 December 2026. If that third act is the manual Nettuno car Maserati confirmed in June, or anything with a chassis number of its own, the Eldorado will have been a prelude. If it is another paint code, Maserati will have spent its hundredth year selling 1958 because it had nothing from 2026 to sell.
Follow us on Google News.
Set AutoNext as your preferred source on Google Discover.
