3 replies to this topic

[jph]

When Stirling Moss took delivery of his 250F in 1954 it was painted green with, I think, a yellow nose band. Later, when the car was 'adopted' by the Maserati works it was repainted red and retained a green band on the nose; but photographs taken in late 1954 show that it actually had two colours on its noseband. Can anyone tell me what was the other colour?

[D-Type]

There have been several threads on this topic try a Search BB on 'Moss Maserati colour'. the answer is probably there somewhere.

[Barry Boor]

JPH, we have ascertained that the car was repainted several times.

One thing it never had, I think, was a YELLOW noseband.

It was, at various times and in no particular order:
red,
red with a green nose,
a mid metallicy sort of green,
grey,
grey and white with a red, white and blue nose band.

It may well have been dark green as well at some point.

AFAIK, it was never blue or yellow!

[jph]

D-Type and Barry, thank you for the pointers. The colours I'm particularly interested in are those that it ran at the September 1954 Goodwood meeting: main colour was red, according to (amongst others) the contemporary Autocar report and the photos both in that report and on page 34 of David McKinney's book show the car as having a two-coloured noseband. This picture and another on page 32 of that book make it look as though the leading edge of the nose may well have been bare aluminium; but the latter picture, at the Italian GP shows no evidence of the secondary green band. There is a later later picture on page 51 (by which time the general consensus seems to be that the colour was again green) also shows two different colour bands.

Does it really matter? Well, I'm building a model of the Goodwood 1954 car and I've lost count of the number of times I've guessed a colour scheme, only to find the elusive colour picture a few weeks later showing that I'd guessed wrong.