1934 Maserati 8CM

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in March 1996.

It's the 1934 Maserati 8CM, chassis 3018, originally owned by Tazio Nuvolari, and the book Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection says this about it:

    'In 1933, while the new Alfa Romeo Monoposti were languishing in enforced inactivity, the Scuderia Ferrari persevered with their old Monza models, fitted with more powerful 2.6 litre engines. This added urge proved too much for the fragile transmissions, which regularly failed and robbed thr Scuderia drivers of several good placings.

     Tazio Nuvolari – the legendary Italian ace – suffered more than most. The Press began to call him a car-breaker. He and some of his team-mates broke with Ferrari and moved down the Via Emilia to buy competitive cars from the Maserati brothers in Bologna. These were the 2991cc supercharged eight-cylinder 8CMs, and the ex-Alfa Romeo aces quickly turned them into race winners.

     Alfieri Maserati had begun competitions in the 1920s, and in 1926 he modified an eight-cylinder Diatto which became the first Maserati racing car when Diatto lost interest in racing and dispensed with Alfieri’s services. He and his brothers Bindo, Ernesto and Ettore formed their own company to build competition cars and quickly proved successful, selling many cars to private entrants.

     Early in 1933 their 8CM engine was introduced, installed in originally 2.8 litre ‘two-seater’ chassis from the previous year. Three of these cars were produced before Maserati introduced their first Monoposto with incredibly slim chassis and body, only 62 centimetres wide. With the advent of the 750kg Formula in 1934, the later 8CMs were widened to meet the 85-centimetre minimum width rule, although this was cleverly achieved in the chassis and lower body sides only, leaving the upper part of the shell as slim and wind-cheating as before.

     In its original form the 8CM chassis was whippy and made the lightweight 210bhp car a ferocious thing to drive. Its braking was sophisticated, however, for the brothers had revived hydraulic operation for all four brakes – twelve years after their value had been proved by Duesenberg in winning the 1921 French Grand Prix.

     Burly opera-singing driver Giuseppe Campari gave the 8CM engine its first victory in the French Grand Prix, and then Nuvolari won the Belgian event in his brand-new privately-owned single-seater. The Mantuan won again at Montenero and Nice, was second in the Italian GP and led in Spain before his car failed him. This brilliant season was marred by the deaths of fellow Maseratistis Campari and Borzacchini in the Monza GP, but Nuvolari continued racing his slim-bodied car – number 3007 – into 1934.

     Early in the new season he wrecked this car in the Bordino Cup race at Alessandria, somersaulting it into a stout tree. A young newcomer named Carla Pedrazzini was killed in his unmanageable 8CM in this same event, but the indomitable Nuvolari was soon recovered and racing again. His new wide-chassis car – number 3018 – was second to Fagioli’s Mercedes in the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara, and then the 8CM was replaced by a new Tipo 34 six-cylinder 3.3 litre model for the Italian GP.

     About twenty-three Maserati 8CMs were built in this period, nineteen of them single-seaters, and one – number 3003 – being based on a Bugatti chassis for Count Premoli, to form the PBM, or Premoli-Bugatti-Maserati.

     They were exceptionally popular among private owners, particularly since Alfa Romeo would not release their P3s at the time. Earl Howe and Philippe Étancelin ran single-seater cars with some success, while the American-born Cambridge undergraduate Whitney Straight ordered a three-car team.

He had them modified by Thomson & Taylor at Brooklands, fitted with Wilson pre-selector gearboxes and stiffened chassis and even designed his own grille shape. These cars were raced widely and successfully by the Straight team and, in later years, by private owners.

     The immaculate and very original 8CM in the Donnington Collection is 3018, Nuvolari’s personal 1934 car; it is possible that it was built using some of the parts salvaged from his Alessandra wreck. In present form it is fitted with a Wilson pre-selector gearbox, which Nuvolari disliked and used only occasionally.

     The car was in the Collezione Giorgio Franchetti for many years and is one of the best-preserved of all the great racing cars of the 1930s.'