Word: maseratis
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Spinning around the great circuits of the world, one whining, bright red racer topped them all last year: Italy's Maserati, the car that whisked Juan Manuel Fangio to a world championship and many another driver to fame in the last 30 years. To Maserati's makers, Adolfo Orsi and his son Omar, the fame was expected to pave the way for quantity production of a new richly appointed sports-touring car rivaling Mercedes-Benz and Ferrari. When tighter new rules outmoded their biggest racers last fall, the Orsis were ready to quit racing and plunge completely into...
Last week Maserati skidded off the track. The government-owned bank Credito Italiano asked that Adolfo Orsi be declared bankrupt, impounded Maserati's assets, sent the shamed Orsis into hiding. Adolfo owed the bank $15,600 and had written a check with no funds to cover it. But that was only part of the reason. For the Orsis, the bright fame of Maserati had been gradually turned by many fine Latin hands from a blessing into a curse...
...crowd of 150,000 lined the broad boulevard. The Cuban National Sports Commission delayed the race for more than an hour while local cops ran down false rumors of Fangio's release. Then France's Maurice Trintignant slid into Fangio's empty seat in a blue Maserati, and the big buckets of power were sent careening around the 3½-mile course...
...Trouble. On the Malecón, the danger more familiar to Fangio began to haunt his fellow racers as they whirled into the long (315 miles) grind. Britain's Stirling Moss took the lead in a Ferrari, Missourian Masten Gregory, driving another Ferrari, was second. Fangio's Maserati, in Trintignant's hands, fell far back to 13th place. By the end of five laps, all the drivers saw that almost every turn was slick with spilled oil; they knew that they were in for trouble...
...later Britain's Stirling Moss, Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn somehow escaped uninjured from a three-car pile-up on a barricade of telephone poles. All afternoon the accidents continued, but no one was hurt. Only five cars finished. Still, World Champion Juan Fangio had to push his Maserati to the limit to cross the line in 3 hr. 10 min. 12.8 sec., a scant half-minute ahead of Briton Tony Brooks's Vanwall...