CarBrandLogos archive · Maserati · 1926

MaseratiMaserati Tipo 26

The first car to carry the trident, and it won its class on debut.

Photo: Unknown photographer · Public domain

The story

A defining chapter in Maserati history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Maserati Tipo 26, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The Maserati brothers had spent the early 1920s preparing and modifying other people's racing cars, chiefly Diattos. When Diatto withdrew from racing in 1926, Alfieri Maserati took the work in hand and built a car under the family's own name, using a trident borrowed from the Neptune fountain in Bologna as its badge.

Tipo 26 · 玛莎拉蒂 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Design and engineering

The Tipo 26 was a front-engined single-seater with a supercharged 1.5-litre straight-eight and, at first, a three-speed gearbox — a four-speed arrived in 1927. Alfieri drove it himself at the 1926 Targa Florio and won the 1.5-litre class, which is an unusually emphatic way for a marque to introduce itself.

In production

The design proved elastic. Over the following years it was enlarged and re-bored into a family of racing cars carrying letters after the number, taking in two-litre and larger capacities, and the 26 line established Maserati as a serious constructor of Grand Prix machinery through to the early 1930s. Production ran to 1932, after which the 4CM took over the small-capacity racing role. Alfieri himself died in 1932, and his brothers carried the firm on.

At a glance