Maserati 8CM 3000 S/N 3002

Story by Pete Vack

It was not unlikely that Henry W. Uhle II should have decided to own a Grand Prix Maserati. He was, after all, an engineer and a yacht designer whose career spanned 48 years. From 1945 until retiring in 1987, he was a project engineer for Sparkman & Stephens Inc., New York City and before that, from 1941 until 1945, he was a naval architect for various shipyards. Born in 1920, Henry was also one of the breed of postwar U. S. foreign car enthusiasts and had the kind of mentality that could appreciate what the Maserati brothers were doing in Italy.

So sometime, probably in the 1960s when the opportunity to import a Grand Prix Maserati from England presented itself, Uhle jumped.

Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly when.

Dale LaFollette, who sent in the photos of Uhle and the Maserati, remembers that Uhle was a wonderful guy and enjoyed driving the Grand Prix Maserati on the street. “I believe he purchased a Maserati photo and in the order he mentioned he had owned Birkin’s Maserati. I quizzed him about that and the letter we have was his response. I don’t really know much more about Henry, but he was one of those guys that I wished I lived closer to so I could visit him. ”

Uhle sent a letter to LaFollette in August of 1996 with photos of the Maserati, by then long sold.

“Here are the prints of the Maserati. I must alert you to the fact that the color is, during printing, way off—it is actually true Italian Racing Red!. The posed, B/Ws were taken in England prior to my purchase. In the color shot, I’m in the cockpit – although I now have a full white beard and am older!”

“I had corresponded with Ron Flockhart, race driver in England…(killed) – ERAs, BRM, etc whom I greatly admired. He inspected the Maser for me before I bought it.

“For the record: 1932 Tip 8C3000 (#3002) 2.9 liter, straight 8, supercharged, Grand Prix Maserati. Road equipped after WWII. Ex-Sir Henry “Tim” Birkin.”

Tim Birkin

Ok, we are back to Birkin again. There is probably not a soul among us who was not aware from childhood that Tim Birkin died after suffering a burn on an exhaust pipe. It was an unusual death for a race driver, for deaths among that sort were usually much more violent and sudden. His death was remembered for its banality. Ironically one of Birkin’s more famous quotes is on a t-shirt found by Dale LaFollette; “It is far better to die at Full Throttle than to live behind a desk.” (Full Throttle was the title of his autobiography.)

We may not all remember that the aforementioned exhaust was attached to a Grand Prix Maserati. Ulhe’s Grand Prix Maserati.

In his letter to LaFollette, Uhle went on: “He placed 3rd in the 1933 Tripoli Grand Prix, but was on the way to winning but for a bad pit stop. Burned his arm on the exhaust and died from that not long after in England (as you know!)”
We don’t know why LaFollette knew about Birkin, but we assume that Dale falls into the souls among us. And like others, Uhle might have thought that Tim, being one of the Bentley “Boys”, and called Tim so un-Britishly, was a regular chap. And so he might have been, but Birkin was actually to the manor born.

According to Wiki, Birkin was the son of Sir Thomas Stanley Birkin and the Hon. Margaret Diana Hopetoun Chetwind, who were a wealthy family living in Nottingham. Early on Birkin was called “Tim” after a comic book character Tiger Tim. Along with his younger brother Archie, Tim was attracted to cars and motorsports. Archie died racing a motorcycle during practice for the 1927 TT Isle of Man but that didn’t slow down Tim, who, along with Dorothy Paget, was helping Bentley achieve consecutive Le Mans wins (Birkin won in 1929 with Barnato) and even more fame.

He was responsible for the famed “Blower Bentleys” and with his Bentley “Brooklands Battleship” set the outer circuit lap record at Brooklands in 1932 at 137.96 mph. After Rolls-Royce bought Bentley, Birkin turned to Alfa Romeo, winning at Le Mans in 1931 with the Earl of Howe. Then, in 1933, his friend Bernard Rubin purchased the 8C 3000 Maserati and entered it for the Tripoli Grand Prix in which Birkin finished third.

Then what?

Orsini/Zagari have the serial number and list it thusly:
1932 Officina A, Maserati Bologna
1933 Bernard Rubin, GB for Tim Birkin
1934 Noel Rees for Brian Lewis
1946 Taso Mathieson

Per an auction report on the sister car 3001, “It is thought that [3001] then passed through the hands of Mr. Martinez who had managed to also acquire the sister chassis 3002, which also happened to reside in the USA. Both cars passed through the hands of one more USA owners [including Uhle] before being acquired by Cameron Millar in the late 1960s and he shipped them to the U.K. He chose to keep 3002 for himself and 3001, which was in the poorer condition, was sold to Mr. Joel Finn.

According to a Ferrari chat thread by Walter Baumer, Millar kept the body of 3002 before selling it to Peter Kaus collection. “#2512 got the body of #3002 that Cameron Millar kept when he sold the car fitted with a new body to Peter Kaus. The current owner of #2512 bought this original body for the restoration of his car as it had lost its genuine coachwork…”

It now resides with the Louwmans collection in the Netherlands.

A further note on Birkin’s fatal burn from Wiki. “The traditional view is that the wound turned septic, whilst others say Birkin suffered from a malaria attack. It was probably a combination of both that proved fatal, as Birkin died at Countess Carnavon Nursing Home in London 22 June 1933.” Birkin was only thirty-six.

Henry Uhle II, however, had a few more years. He died at the age of 87 on January 16, 2006.

To read more on the 8CMs click here..