This book retraces the saga of the ten Maserati 450S “Bazookas.”

The Maserati 450S, also called Tipo 54 in the factory codification, was the fastest and most powerful of the Maseratis built to face the archrival Ferrari in the World Sports Car Championship of the 1957 season, which constituted the apotheosis of the golden age of motor racing. Fitted with the powerful Maserati 4.5 liter V8 engine and dressed in an elegant bodywork by Fantuzzi, it was the “lethal weapon” that was to allow Maserati to win the 1957 Sportscar World Championship.

Nicknamed “Bazooka,” the 450S became also the most tragic race car that Maserati ever built: it won in Sebring and Sweden, but it totally failed at the Mille Miglia, at the Nürburgring, and in Le Mans, culminating in a grotesque and disastrous race in Venezuela, leaving all laurels to Ferrari. It then became obsolete in Europe due to a change in the FIA regulations in 1958.

In the United States, the Maserati 450S started its other race career with owners such as Tony Parravano, Jim Kimberly, John Edgar, Temple Buell, Ebb Rose, and Frank Harrison. The 450S won many races in the United States at the hands of the best US drivers like Carroll Shelby, Jim Hall, Masten Gregory, Dan Gurney, Lloyd Ruby, and Bill Krause, and so became a very important part of the US race history in the 1950s. This book includes an exceptional iconography of period photos, most of which have never been published before.