Past Tense

375MM

375 MM

GRAHAM GAULD talks with two owners of a veteran from the 1953 Carrera.

For the 1953 racing season, Enzo Ferrari decided to produce three different sports car contenders, the 340 MM, powered by a 4. 1 -liter engine, the 250 MM, with a 3-litcr engine, and the 166 MM with a 2-liter engine. The body designs for these three models were given to three different carrozzerias. The 250 MM was created by Pinin Farina, who unveiled his design-a closed coupe its smooth silhouette and aggressive egg-crate grille combining to express great power and purpose-at the Geneva Motor Show. This was the first Ferrari race car by Pinin Farina and, *in retrospect, one of his most beautiful.
375 MM Nineteen-fifty-three was also the first year for the World Sports (at Championship, so the great long-distance events, such as Nurburgring, Le Mans, and the Mille Miglia, took on even more importance for the manufacturers-Ferrari included. However, Maranello opted to skip the first round, at Sebring, and it was left to Ebby Lunken in his privately-entered 166 MM to present Ferrari with the season's First championship point by finishing 6th. Next on the racing calendar, although the event (lid not count toward the championship, was Giro di Sicilia, which was won by Luigi Villoresi in a Vignale-bodied 340. Then, in the Mille Miglia, Giannino Marzotto-piloting the same car-won, ahead of Fangio in a 3.5-liter Alfa Romeo. Marzotto's popular win resulted in this model being given the MM designation (which, of course, stands for Mille Miglia).
The engine powering, the 340s was essentially a beefed-up version of the type used in the 340 America road cars. For Le Mans, Ferrari entered three 340s, all bodied by Pinin Farina in the above-described 250 MM style (a fourth 340 MM was also in the race, the privately-entered, Vignale-bodied s/n 0284 driven by Cole/Chinetti). Two of the factory cars were powered by the 4. 1 -liter engine, but Ferrari hedged his bet by mounting a more powerful 4.5-liter engine in the third car, s/n 03 18, piloted by Ascari and Villoresi. The car was extremely fast, with Ascari setting a new lap record and shadowing the leading Jaguar for almost half the race before having to call it quits in the 19th hour with a worn out clutch.
375 MM A month after Le Mans, Ferrari arrived at Spa with the three 340 Berlinettas sporting smaller rear windows, but now all were fitted with the bigger 4.5-liter engine (in addition to s/n 0318, these were s/n 0320 and s/n 0322). There were also further changes to the bodywork: the grille was smaller and lower, arid the headlights were of the faired-in type.
While the 4.1-liter engine used in the 340, as mentioned, was developed from a road-car powerplant, the 4.5-liter was a direct descendent of Ferrari's successful Formula One engine. In sports-car guise, it delivered 300 hp, 80 less than its Formula One relative. The stroke was unchanged at 68 mm, but the bore had been increased to 84 mm, which made for a total capacity of 4522 cc. The fuel mixture was provided by three four-choke 40-mm Webers. Power was sent to the road via a four-speed box. The chassis was essentially unchanged from the early barchettas: transverse leaf springs up front, and a rigid rear axle-a main difference was the longer wheelbase, now measuring 2600 mm.
As the season wore on, it became clear that either Jaguar or Ferrari would become the World Champion, but for the final round, the Pan American road race in Mexico, Jaguar sent no official entries. Technically, Scuderia Ferrari also stayed away, but had entrusted their new factory berlinetta, the 375 MM, to the reliable Milano dealer Franco Cornacchia and his Scuderia Guastalla stable but these machines were really private entries in name only. There were four more Ferrari berlinettas entered by the prolific Cornacchia ( Chinetti, Ricci, Mancini, and Stagnoli were the drivers) and all were sporting 4.5-liter engines, but they were modified 340s, which had now been sold to private competitors.
375 MM For the whole of the 1953 racing season, Umberto Maglioli had been driving for the official Lancia team, but now, all of a sudden, he appeared in Mexico as the designated driver of one of the three Ferrari 375 MMs: s/n 0358. The car's present owner, Frenchman Jean Sage, picks up the story:
"The Maglioli machine was actually a 375 spyder with an added roof, so it was the first true 375 MM berlinetta, rather than a 340 MM fitted with the bigger engine. A second car, identical to mine, was built (s/n 0380), and was sold to Count Innocente Biaggio, who entered it at Le Mans in 1954, where he shared the driving chores with Porfirio Rubirosa. Unfortunately, Biaggio put it into the sand during the second hour, and the car remained stuck there for the rest of the race, despite his heroic efforts (he was wearing a jacket, white shirt, and tie) to dig it out.
"I think, all counted, there were ten 375 MMs built: three sports racing cars and seven road cars, among them the car of Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, who was married to Ingrid Bergman at the time.
This car now belongs to Pierre Bardinon, and had originally been built for Michel Paul Cavallier, the French industrialist who was a founding member of SEFAC Ferrari (Societa Esercizio Fabbriche Automobili e Corse) and a great financial supporter of Ferrari.
"Maglioli had just left Lancia under a cloud of controversy, and now his old team had four factory cars entered in the Pan American race (Fangio, Taruffl, Bonetto and Castellotti being the pilots). For this reason, Maglioli suddenly saw himself as the driver of a lone factory Ferrari, pitted against the four factory Lancias, so he had the name Quinto Fabio Massimo painted across the body, right above the windscreen. This was the name of a Roman Consul250 years before Christ-who became a legend in Italy when he defeated Hannibal with an outnumbered army. So Maglioli psyched himself up for the coming battle by telling everyone, 'I'm Quinto Fabio Massimo, and with just one Ferrari works car I'm going to beat the Lancia army.' Maglioli did well at first, winning one special stage, driving my car, but then lost a wheel-he managed to stop the car just before it would have hit a wall. Because the rules allowed it, he then switched to Ricci's car, which was running well back in the pack-but was on the same team-and went on to win several more stages."
That year's Carrera Panamericana race took a heavy toll in cars-and lives. Stagnoli, together with his co-driver, Scotuzzi, was killed when his 340 MM blew a tire and crashed heavily, and Bonetto, in the leading Lancia, flew off the road and hit a lamp post-he and his co-driver were both killed.
375 MM "As I mentioned, Maglioli really dominated the early part of the race-on the Mexico City to Leon leg, the Ferrari driver had broken all previous records while winning the stage-but this was before the wheel came off. After switching to the Ricci car, Maglioli won the Parral-Chihuahua stage in a remarkable new record time, but the real performance came on the final stage, to Ciudad Juarez. Maglioli was climbing fast up through the field and averaged an incredible 137 mph over the 222-mile stage. He finished 6th overall, with the sister-340 MM of Mancini in 4th. Ironically, Fangio, who captured the event for Lancia, never won a single stage, but ran consistently. Ferrari, thanks to Mancini's 4th and Maglioli's 6th, captured the first World Sports Car Championship, collecting 29 points to Jaguar's 27." After the Carrera Panamericana, s/n 0358 was returned to the factory at Maranello, from where it was sold to Roberto Bonomi, an Italian who had emigrated to Argentina. He raced it in Europe during the 1954 season, then shipped it to Argentina and raced it there during the balance of the Fifties and into the early part of the Sixties. The next chapter of the story is virtually blank, until s/n 0358 ended up in the hands of Italian historic-car dealer Corrado Cupellini, who was in partnership with Count Johnny Lurani. Cupellini now picks up the story:
"One day in 1974, a man called me from Buenos Aires and asked if I had any interest in a 375 MM, and I said, 'yes, why not, send me the pictures.' When they arrived, I realized immediately that the car was one hundred percent original, so I called and told him that I was interested but wanted to know his asking price. He said that he didn't want any money, but wanted to trade it for a modern Ferrari. 'Which Ferrari?' 1 asked him, and he told me he wanted a 330 GT-not the GTC, but the plain GT. I agreed, and asked him to ship the car to Genoa, where I would then meet up and show him two or three different 330 GTs that he could choose from.
"There was no news from the man for six months. Then one day he called and said that he would arrive in Genoa with the car on a certain day and at a certain time. 1 was a bit surprised, but eager to see this 375 MM, which was in such good, original condition-even the tires looked original in the photographs. When we finally met, I found that the engine was actually running, and after I had checked the car out, I asked him why he wanted to swap it for a modern Ferrari. He then told me that he had customs papers for the 375 MM, and that he would transfer the license plate to the newer 330 GT, and just return to Argentina using the same papers. 1 told him I didn't want to know anything about that, so I had a word with the shipping agent, took the plates off the 375 MM, and gave them back to the owner to put on the 330 GT.
"The 375 MM was put on the back of a truck, and I took it to Johnny Lurani's home. Once there, we started the engine again and then drove the old sports racer around in Lurani's garden. With us at the time was the Australian motorcycle ace Ken Cavanagh, so I invited Ken to try out the car, and he drove it around Lurani's villa. We found that the engine was fantastic and very powerful, but that the suspension and brakes were tired. Lurani then called Giannino Marzotto to talk to him about the 375 MM, and he found out that his brother, Paolo Marzotto, had retired from racing after driving a 375 MM spyder at Le Mans in 1954-because the car was a monster. Then Johnny found he was so tall he couldn't sit comfortably in the 375 MM, and it was the same for me. So we decided we would try to sell it, and perhaps buy a spyder instead. However, it stayed in the garage for about one year before it went to Marchese Gianfranco Selvatico in Imola, who owned a team of race horses. He had the car restored by Luciano at Sauro in Bologna, and then sold it."
It appears the car eventually came to Canada, from where it later went to Robert Desmarais in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who kept the historic 375 MM for about 15 years-until 1996, when he agreed to sell it to Sage.
"When I bought s/n 0358 from Desmarais," Sage recalls, "it was worn out. The engine was in pieces, and I took it to be rebuilt by Rick Bunkfelt in Wisconsin."
In the fall of 1996, Sage invited Umberto Maglioli, and his co-driver during the 1953 Carrera Panamericanal Pasquale Cassani, to Monza, where they were nostalgically re-united with the car they had driven forty three years earlier.
It seems most fitting that this famous, early, and pivotal Ferrari racing car has come into the hands of Jean Sage, for he is the past owner of a variety of very special Ferraris, including the 750 Monza (s/n 0520), raced by his countryman Louis Rosier, and the 860 Monza (s/n 0604M) which won the 12 hours at Sebring in 1956, with Fangio and Castellotti doing the driving duties.
Thirty-seven years ago, Jean Sage competed in his first rally as co-driver with Andre Simon in the Mont Blanc rally. They were competing in a 250 GT (s/n 073 1), and one could say that the die was cast there and then-Sage went on to become manager of a number of leading French racing teams, his tenure as team boss culminating in the key assignment as sporting director for Renault. Jean Sage's tenure included the firm's Grand Prix debut in 1977, the year their first turbocharged Grand Prix car was launched. Sage later became a consultant to Ferrari. He organized the Ferrari/Shell Historic Challenge series until last year, and regularly competes in historic events.
After having taken part in Ferrari's 50th Anniversary celebrations in Rome, as well as at Silverstone and Enna, the car went back to Italy, where the final aspects of the restoration took place. The various modifications to the body that had taken place over the years have been restored to their original design. For example, the four taillights that had been fitted have been replaced by the correct two, air scoops have been added to the doors, and the filler cap has been moved to the inside from its incorrect location on the outside. The multiplicity of rivets on the body seams, which was one of the features of the car when Sage bought it, were unoriginal, and they, too, have been removed. S/n 0358 now stands as it did during its glory days, when Quinto Fabio Massimo set out to conquer the Lancia army in Mexico.

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