Maserati 8CM 3015: Review and Special Offer!

Maserati 3015 – The Complete History is published by Schmidgasse Buchhandler, and written by Bernhard Brägger, a Swiss historian who is well known as the organizer of the Klausenpass Race Revival. It is impressively done, with a bronze-colored chassis plate embossed on the 12 inch by 9.25 inch horizontal hard cover. It lacks a dust jacket or slipcover. With 180 pages and about 170 illustrations it is not massive but large enough to cover the subject matter. At $176 (135 Euro), it is reasonably priced for a book limited to 1000 copies; 600 in English and 400 in German. The book traces the wonderful, colorful history of a single 1934 Maserati 8CM, chassis 3015, and does so with taste, accomplishment and accuracy.

Documenting a Treasure
It is largely up to the owners to gather information on the cars in their collections, and furthermore to have someone (like Brägger) sort, investigate, research, confirm and write the history of the owner’s car. Museums such as the Simeone Foundation and the Mullin Museum often do the same job but with brief histories in a large book format. But the advent of self- publishing firms in the past few years has made it easier to produce low-volume high-quality books and they are now becoming more common. The placement of an unbiased writer or editor is critical, as history is all too often the victim of an overabundance of enthusiasm and an eye on market value rather than accuracy. I’d beware of SCBs that read like an auction house catalog.

This is not the case for the story of 3015 however. In our opinion, Brägger has done an excellent job ferreting out the history of 3015; he has gone to the original sources wherever possible, used magazines, newspapers, programs and books to double check facts known about 3015; he has listed all such resources in a fairly comprehensive bibliography but there are no footnotes or indexes. Although most of the information is new, we have no reason to doubt its veracity and no questionable claims have been made in reference to the car’s successes or owners.

There is little reason to hype its history though, because the story of 3015, while not as impressive as the Nuvolari or Whitney Straight machines, is nevertheless filled with the hopes and dreams of a series of owners/drivers that spanned some 47 years from 1934 to 1980.

The story begins in mid-2006, when Bugatti Type 35 owner Kurt Hasler was approached by a stranger who told him that a friend owned a car similar to the Bugatti, a Maserati with an eight cylinder engine. Although Hasler was given a good description of the car at the time, he was too busy to follow up until he received a letter from Hungary with photos and more details of the car. It was enough information for Maserati and Bugatti historian Hans Matti to confirm that it was indeed the ‘missing’ Type 8C, chassis number 3015. That got Hasler going, and in December of 2006 he was in an office-like living room in the basement of a villa in Hungary, staring at the Maserati 8CM 3015.

It’s a great start to a wonderful story that just keeps getting better and better. Once the new darling of Ecurie Braillard of Paris, 3015’s history includes a range of characters from Tazio Nuvolari to Isadora Duncan and her boyfriend, and amazingly, to Indy 500 winner Peter De Paulo. We were somewhat surprised to find our that de Paolo had a severe accident in Europe driving a Maserati, and even more surprised to find out it was while driving 3015. Brägger finds de Paolo’s autobiography and enough evidence to substantiate the claim.

While most of the 8CMs stayed either in Europe or in Great Britain (three alone to Whitney Straight in the UK), after the breakup of Ecurie Braillard, (organized and run by Nelly Braillard) 3015 fell into the hands of a Hungarian count, and the car stayed in Hungary during and after the War. The Iron Curtain fell and it went unseen by the west until 1988, when it made a brief appearance at a vintage car event in Austria. It again went into hiding until found by Hasler in 2006.

The Fastest Car in Hungary

Unlike most of the other 8CMs, because 3015 spent its post war years in Hungary, it had a longer competitive life than others. Since it was still a faster car than most of the Communist bloc cars at the time, 3015 continued to race and win in minor events up until 1957. Brägger tells the complete story of the car and includes historical photographs every step of the way.
There seems little doubt that 3015 deserves to be the subject of a book, for its history reflects the turmoil in France during the 1930s, Hungary before Hitler and later under Communist control, the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and the fall of the Communist governments in the late 1980s. Brägger cites these social forces throughout the book, bringing the life of 3015 into focus in an interesting manner. If cars could talk 3015 would be a great witness to the history of the 20th century.

Part of the book is devoted to detailing the restoration. No doubt Hasler wanted to keep it as original as possible, but that proved to be a pipe dream as the chassis and engine were dismantled. A new supercharger had to be made up, as well as a new crankshaft and pistons. The transmission and rear end (equipped with a quick-change ratio device) needed only new bearings. The chassis needed attention but the body, aside from a new rear streamlined fairing needed only paint.

Along the way, Hasler decided to restore it to its 1937 form, when owned by the Hungarian count. Hence the use of the streamlined headrest fairing and the paint in Hungarian racing colors of red, white and green.

The story, historical photographs, comprehensive research and contemporary photos rank high on our charts. Maserati literature, while growing, is still sparse so this is a must-have for Maserati enthusiasts as well as pre-war historians. On the downside, the captions are often written in the past tense, and while the text is a decent translation from Bragger’s German, there are a few clunkers and several misspelled words.

20% OFF PRICE OF 135 EUROS (110 Euros, $140) FOR VELOCETODAY READERS! ORDER FROM THE WEBSITE BELOW AND STATE THAT YOU HAVE READ OUR REVIEW IN VELOCETODAY TO QUALIFY FOR DISCOUNT.
Available from: maserati3015.com