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The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2015 81
The Daytona Coupes were not the
only cars to capture Peter Brock’s at-
tention at Goodwood. He discovered a
replica of the Maserati Typo 151/3
with a Drogo body. This car had simi-
lar lines to the Daytona but, according
to Brock, was slipperier. It was, he
said, what the Daytona should have
looked like but he was prohibited by
the FIA rules at the time. “
When the
Daytona Coupe went through tech at
LeMans
,” Brock recalls, “
the French
FIA inspectors interpreted their rule
differently than it had been written
and the Drogo Maserati was allowed
to compete
.” It was subsequently de-
stroyed in a crash at LeMans in 1964,
pretty much ending Maserati’s racing
activities.
In 1962, Maserati built a coupe de-
signed by Giulio Alfieri to comply with
the FIA’s new endurance racing rules.
The rules were written to allow
smaller manufacturers to compete
against the larger and more well es-
tablished manufacturers, like Ferrari,
who had dominated the class year
after year, making it impossible for the
smaller builders to compete.
Maserati’s coupe was called the
Typo 151/1 and its design and con-
struction was backed financially by
Maserati importers Briggs Cunning-
ham in the U.S. and Johnny Simone in
France. Three cars were built. The cov-
ered headlights, teardrop cabin and
Kamm-back tail were all hallmarks of
what were thought of, in the early
1960s, as cutting edge aerodynamic
treatments. The car pictured [
below,
left
] is the third car built, originally
sold to Cunningham (who got two of
the three). It is pictured at Riverside
in 1963 with Goodyear rep Fred Gam-
ble [
note the Cobra team jacket
].
For 1964, Maserati’s factory team
revised the Typo 151/2 (an update of
the 151/1 for 1963) using a unique
body design by Pietro Drogo. Jokingly
called the “racing van” because of its
flat roof and cut-off Kamm-back rear
treatment. The car also had flush-
mounted side windows.
Interestingly, both Brock and
Drogo were working with the same
basic design, at the same time, unbe-
knownst to each other.