21 replies to this topic

[Doug Nye]

Some years ago I remember writing somewhere about the vexed question of the V12-engined Briggs Cunningham Maserati Tipo 63 which Walt Hansgen had crashed at Tertre Rouge, Le Mans, during that year's 24-Hour race.  

 

In course of 'repair' by Maserati back in Modena its mechanical components were actually transferred to a replacement chassis frame, then shipped back to Cunningham/Momo in the US under the original entity's chassis number.

 

Years later the set aside original chassis - whose short wheelbase had made it too nervous to be wanted back by Cunningham - was acquired from Maserati by a marque enthusiast, and it passed subsequently into other hands - all under its original chassis number...which was duplicated on the later-season LWB replacement which also survived.  

 

Thus we had two Tipo 63s in differing configurations but both with claim to the identical original chassis ID - one having been 'the car' dating from early 1961 up to Le Mans, and the other being 'the car' as run during the latter part of that same season.

 

I recall writing about the matter and it being published somewhere, but for the life of me I cannot now locate where.  So this isn't exactly a missing person plea, more a missing feature story plea ... if anybody sees it, or recalls it, I would really appreciate being given a lead on where to look.

 

DCN

 

 

[VWV]

Is this the article you were thinking of Doug?

As an example there are two versions of 1961 Maserati Tipo 63 chassis ‘0002’ in existence, one used at Le Mans, and its immediate Cunningham team long-wheelbase replacement, assembled round a fresh frame after Le Mans, which achieved a subsequent US racing history all of its own. There’s no question which was which: these are two legitimate cuttings from the same rose bush, yet they share the same identity – as duplicated in period.
The legitimacy of such duplication within the historic racing period, as opposed to contemporary period, is another debate, but in the hypothetical case of JC’s G-T as above, we’d have one car quite properly credited with using the chassis he once drove, and a second car which was once based upon that chassis, but which has now been rebuilt around a new one. And you could bet that the new-chassis version might be 4 5sec a lap quicker than the re-housed original, so that alone should enhance its continuing value. Many would-be historic racers today seek front-running glory above all, while mere history is something that Mr Ego, the owner, can confer or deny as he thinks fit…
As Jenks used to say “Yeah, but…”. Worth thinking about, but without any such self-deluding notions as selling a chassis but ‘keeping its history’.

https://www.motorspo...12/140/doug-nye

Edited by VWV, 30 September 2022 - 23:15.

[Doug Nye]

YES!  Thank you so much, VWV.  I think a longer version of the Tipo 63 story was also published somewhere, but I really cannot recall where...

 

DCN

[marksixman]

Doug. Unable to remember every single word you have ever written, and where, perhaps.

 

But incapable ? NO !!!  

[tampaguy]

All you had to do was ask Willem ? 

[TedWalker]

One car came to the UK. It was raced in the HSCC a long time ago by Bob Owen

[Roger Clark]

In Birdcage to Supercage, Willem Oosthoek said that Hansgen crashed 63.010, an LWB car at Le Mans. Dick Thompson and Augie Pabst drove the SWB 63.002, which was subsequently rebuilt as an LWB. 
 

He later says that in 1986 Edmond Pery bought a partially dismantled Tipo 63, sold to him as 63.010. When he started restoration Pery found a 63.010 chassis plate welded over the number 63.002.   He built a Tipo 63, which he labelled 63.010 at the same time as he restored 63.010. 
 

Confused?

Edited by Roger Clark, 01 October 2022 - 09:46.

[JoBo]

In Birdcage to Supercage, Willem Oosthoek said that Hansgen crashed 63.010, an LWB car at Le Mans. Dick Thompson and Augie Pabst drove the SWB 63.002, which was subsequently rebuilt as an LWB. 
 

He later says that in 1986 Edmond Pery bought a partially dismantled Tipo 63, sold to him as 63.010. When he started restoration Pery found a 63.010 chassis plate welded over the number 63.002.   He built a Tipo 63, which he labelled 63.010 at the same time as he restored 63.010. 
 

Confused?

Edmond Pery was a very warm, charming person. But he was also a great story-teller...

[Lee Nicolle]

So just another case of dodgey chassis numbers. Which on this site is such a common thing.

[Doug Nye]

Yes - although some chassis numbers prove to be far more dodgy than others...

 

DCN

[rl1856]

2 questions:

 

Do the books written by Joel Finn book offer additional insight ?

 

Is this an example of 2 chassis having a legitimate claim to the same number, because *both* chassis originated at the factory ?

 

Thanks

[Doug Nye]

Correct.

 

DCN

[Henk Vasmel]

For the second version of 002, I have in my notes:

"This should have been 63.012, but since the SWB version was scrapped, a new 002 was easier on the paperwork. It was also consistent with the engine number"

So these days, I would describe it as 012 [002]. Actually 012, and earmarked as such, but never left the factory under that ID, and then 002 between square brackets, signifying the ID on the chassis plate and the name under which it was known at the time. Square brackets to signify the common rectangular shape of a Chassis Plate.

Apart from this, there is also in my notes a car identified as Muletto 002 (Le Mans test '61) which participated that year in Le Mans and Pescara with the identity 63.008. Scuderia Serenissima, which was also the owner of the real 008. Just like the 010 and sometimes 002, it was fitted with the V12 engine.

 

Anyone can shine some more light on this?

[DCapps]

To paraphrase: Italy is a foreign country, they do things differently there, particularly since they're not English, and especially when it comes to assigning identities to racing machines... Motore not telaio.

 

Just saying...

[Doug Nye]

Believe me Don - they still get VERY excited about disputed or duplicated chassis numbers stamped into chassis frames of variable age and occasionally questionable provenance.  The age-old Italian-manufacturer era of engine primacy has long since been submerged in EU-style docu-centrism.  If the paperwork conflicts or the computer system cannot distinguish one from another, or a bureaucratic personality clash magnifies complex or confusing reality into litigation, then the pasta really can hit the fan.

 

As in the case of the perfectly genuine Maserati 350S engine destroyed by court order a few years back because a judge couldn't wrap his mind around what, on paper, was a complex case - yet what in reality could surely have been resolved by application of a little common sense.

 

DCN

[DCapps]

The word for chassis in Italian, telaio, is derived from the term for the frame or framework of things such as the looms used in textiles. 

 

The (very) basic components for an automobile are the chassis (the framework) and the engine, plus along with all the other items such as the transmission and so forth.

 

Long before the VSCC and other such groups declared that identity of an automobile was based upon the chassis, most seem to have accepted this as making sense.

 

However, not everyone, of course.

 

Since there were some who viewed the world somewhat differently for various reasons, along them being those residing on the Italian peninsula, not everyone shared this notion.

 

For whatever reason, they viewed the issue of identity for an automobile, especially sporting or racing machines, being tied to the motor rather than the framework (chassis) holding the motor. 

 

Like it or not, that is how they conferred identify upon these machines. Yes, this is now consigned to the dustbin of antiquity and seen as anachronistic and irrelevant, but so it was.

 

While the separate components of the machine, the motor and the chassis carried their own identities, when combined there was now a single identity, which was generally that of the motor. 

 

Presentism dictates that we ignore whatever those in the past may have practiced within certain realms, often for good reasons, but often ignores what made sense to those doing so at the time (the case of the 350S motore being an example of how commerce and revisionist "history" can and does have consequences).

 

All this said, I have long suspected that by the time the Tipo 63 Birdcages came along that even Maserati had probably been sufficiently bludgeoned enough by The Cult of Chassis Numbers to finally give up and rethink its long-standing concept of Identity. 

 

I think that just reading Chapter 29 and Appendix A  (pages 318 - 331) in Willem Oosthek's Birdcage to Supercage: Maserati Tipo 63-64.65, should and would be helpful. Not to mention headache-inducing... and to say nothing of the rest of the book.

 

Just saying...

[Doug Nye]

Hmmmm - the contention above is not entirely true.  I write 'entirely' because when one is discussing such a large and diverse racing output as that of the Italian industry one can only generalise.

 

For example Alfa Romeo car-bulkhead data plates of the 'tween-war years - as on the later-1930s 8C-2900B sports cars - displayed identifying serial numbers stamped into two bare-metal spaces, one headed 'CHASSIS' (not telaio because English was considered much more sophisticated, up-market, classy) and the other - for the exchangeable assembly which was the engine - headed 'MOTORE'. In bog standard Italian.

 

In-house factory documentation relating to those cars occasionally referred to an individual entity as being 'no vett.' (number - car) followed by the six-digit serial number which matched that of...the chassis (not the engine installed therein).

 

Customs shipping documents for Ferraris post-WW2 normally used the chassis number to identify the assembly passing through a port or crossing an international land border - as in 'ThinWall Special' '125-C-02' of 1950 and 'ThinWall Special' '010-375' of 1952.

 

Within the period under discussion the chassis was widely regarded by fiscal authorities - be it Customs or local vehicle licensing - as being the unifying component enabling a useable entity.  

 

Without the chassis, the relevant set of engine, transmission, suspension, tankage, the controls, seat(s), bodywork, had no unifying overall connection to one another.  

 

So use of chassis numbers to identify "a car" his has not generally been an invented post-period notion of car 'identity' as stated above.  Sorry, but in my experience that statement is simply not true.

 

Just like Alfa Romeo's 'numero vettura' of the late 1930s, or Ferrari's and Maserati's numero telaio of the 1950s/60s, there was a (not formalised, and most certainly admittedly not universal) consistency amongst such major racing marques of identifying a runnable car by a number carried somewhere upon that unifying frame, whether stamped into the base metal or onto an attached ID plate.

 

Just saying...

 

DCN

[DCapps]

And, your point, Doug?

 

[Doug Nye]

[Sterzo]

... one headed 'CHASSIS' (not telaio because English was considered much more sophisticated, up-market, classy)

Zut alors Monsieur!

[mariner]

I think that in modern car manufacturing the collection of parts going down the assembly line becomes a " car" when a VIN number is assigned to it, as opposed to a "order number" or " job number"

 

So a car isn't a CAR until it is a VIN. The VIN number system is defined by the ISO.

 

Using that logic the engine, chassis and body ( which part seems to be ignored in the discussions above ) are of equal power in creating the VIN. 

 

AS cars are shipped across borders prior to registration It is the VIN number which would be the customs reference.

[10kDA]

The US VIN number system predates the existence of the ISO organization by a long, long period of time. Individual states have their own vehicle licensing systems and the numbering scheme standardized at least one aspect - the vehicle itself - in those systems. Also helpful in the insurance industry re: payouts for theft -> chops -> engines turning up where they weren't legally supposed to be.

 

Attention: The Department Of Redundancy Department notes and approves the above usage regarding VIN & ISO. That is all.