The above badge appeared on nearly all OSCA cars produced from 1949 through 1965. An earlier badge, which appeared after Ernesto, Ettore and Bindo Maserati founded OSCA in 1947, left out the part about "Fratelli Maserati", the Maserati brothers. This might have been because when they sold their namesake car company to the Orsi family in 1937, their 10-year consulting contract stipulated they could not go off and make cars with Maserati nameplates. Their name for their new firm, Officine Specializzate Costruzione Automobile, translating roughly to "workshop specializing in car construction", may have demonstrated a deadpan sense of humor as much as respect for the legal technicalities. One thing the brothers' new business plan didn't recognize, however, was how easy it was (and is) to make all your money go away by building racing cars. Their original operation had beaten the odds for 23 years. With the brothers still advising the new ownership, a Maserati had won the Indy 500 two years running, in 1939 & 40...
Unlike the Orsi family, which wanted to sell some road cars reflecting Maserati's racing glory, the Maserati brothers again went after racing glory itself. Their first cycle-fendered cars, like the one above, featured their own single-overhead cam head on a Fiat 1100 cast iron block, fitting the first OSCAs into the growing category of etceterini. Soon enough, though, these MT4 (Maserati Tipo, 4 cylinder) racers featured a 2AD specification, with twin overhead cams, as well as a new engine block. By 1950, the brothers were providing parts for Amedée Gordini*, also native to Italy's Emilia Romagna region but working in Paris on his own racers, at first based on Simca (i.e., French Fiat) engine blocks. Gordini suggested that the Maserati brothers create a new engine for Formula 1, with some funding provided by Simca...
The new engine, designated 4500G (for Gordini) was a 4.5 liter, 60 degree V12 with gear-driven overhead cams, and the brothers proceeded with it after Simca (and Gordini) dropped out. One engine was fitted into an obsolete Maserati racer for Prince Bira, and another into a more modern OSCA chassis (above). Another of the 3 engines built was fitted into what may have been the first Zagato-bodied OSCA road car. When the 4.5 liter Formula 1 was dropped after 1951, Grand Prix races were run on Formula 2 rules, so OSCA made a couple of Formula 2 cars with a twin-cam, inline six that was essentially half of the V12. The Gordini inline 6 was built to a similar design. As a reminder of the OSCA-Gordini connection, a Gordini chases an early OSCA MT4 barchetta in the undated photo below...
A more "standard" MT4 from this period is shown below...
The racing barchettas featured OSCA's trademark "cheese grater" grille, and, unlike contemporary Lancias and early Ferraris, usually featured left-hand drive. This may have reflected the brothers' preferences, as the first postwar Maserati road cars, built while they were still at that firm, favored LHD.
Bodies were contoured tightly in aluminum over the tubular chassis, which featured independent front suspension, a live rear axle, and drum brakes. Bodywork was contracted to specialists like Frua and Morelli, the builders of this purposeful example...
Morelli, a small carrozzeria based in Ferrara, concentrated on OSCAs. Of the 78 to 80 MT4 models produced, 40 were fitted with Morelli bodies...
The MT4 began to post class wins in small-bore racing in Fifties Europe, and in the expanding schedule of SCCA races in the USA...
OSCA, and Stirling Moss, sent a shock wave through the racing community, though, when the 1.5 liter, 1260 pound car below, piloted by Moss and co-driver Bill Lloyd, won the 1954 Sebring 12 Hours outright, beating Jaguars, Ferraris and Lancias with over twice the power. It also beat a 5.5 liter Chrysler-engined Cunningham fielded, like this OSCA, by Briggs Cunningham's team. After this moment, orders poured in for the little racers with the cheese grater grilles, which were offered by Alfred Momo's shop in New York for $9,000 to $10,000. This example still makes 130 hp, and still sports a feature unlike other MT4 spiders, the cutout fender wells added by Momo's craftsmen to increase brake cooling...
The OSCA below, chassis #1108, is an early car that was re-bodied by Vignale in a style that closely follows their bodywork on the much larger Cunningham C3. It's not clear whether this was done to celebrate the Cunningham team's success with OSCAs, which continued into the early 60s...
There were other Vignale coupes, like the MT4 below which raced at Le Mans in 1952 and won its class there in 1953. Styling is by Giovanni Michelotti. Note that the front fenders expose the wheels for better brake cooling, but unlike the Sebring winner, the concave surface extends across the doors to the rear wheels...
The Vignale-bodied coupe below was also designed by Michelotti with those concave flanks, but with a different grille design resembling his efforts on the Ferrari 212 series, also built by Vignale. The photo underlines the small scale of these 86-inch wheelbase cars.
The rear view of the same car shows off the wild rear window arrangement, with the divided backlight extending forward into a kind of skylight. Michelotti and Vignale experimented with unusual greenhouse schemes in the mid-Fifties, including bubble roofs as on the Lancia Nardi Blue Ray.
The MT4 below was bodied by Vignale in 1954 and also shows a similarity to their work on Ferraris, including the slanting egg crate grille and those portholes. This car still exists...
...as does the black example below, which was perhaps the most fully road-equipped OSCA up to 1955, when it was exhibited by Vignale in Paris and sold to a local admirer. Vignale's deft touches include a concave oval grille with fog lights, bumpers providing a bit of protection, and a wraparound rear window resembling that on the then-new Alfa Giulietta Sprint by Bertone.
The cheese grater grille, which appeared almost circular on some early MT4s, became a flattened oval on later OSCAs, like this red sports racer from the 1956-57 period. It was bodied by Morelli.
The Maserati brothers also built 15 of the Tipo J, an 1100 cc Formula Junior racer, in the 1959-61 period, when Formula Junior gained popularity as entry-level, open-wheel racing.
By the late Fifties, front-engined racers had nearly exhausted the search for lower profile and frontal area that would soon lead to the dominance of rear mid-engined designs. Few of those cars, however, offered the sleek, pared-down grace of the S-498 below. From the 1959-60 period, it was a 2-liter twin-cam four. This series of cars introduced disc brakes to OSCA, and was also offered with desmodromic valves on the S-498 DS. These were mechanically opened and closed, like those on some Ducati motorcycles, and on the Mercedes 300SLR. It seemed the Maserati brothers were always finding new ways to spend money on engineering and tooling.
As a way of dealing with these expenses, in a perhaps belated attempt at utilizing racing fame to reach a wider market, the Maserati brothers planned a joint project with Fiat, with Fiat agreeing to manufacture an engine of OSCA design for use in Fiat roadsters as well as in a road-going OSCA GT car. Other than a handful of Frua and Vignale-bodied coupes, most of which wound up on race tracks, OSCA had never made a serious touring car (with heater, bumpers, etc.) before. The first fruits of cooperation with Fiat appeared in 1959 as the Fiat-Osca 1500S, and they gave Fiat a high performance "halo car" to entice Americans and increasingly affluent Europeans (something it later tried with the Ferrari-engined Fiat Dino V6). These cars were familiar Pinin Farina-bodied Fiat roadsters with OSCA engines. The Maserati brothers wanted something more special...
Fiat soon increased engine size a bit for the 1600S, and the OSCA GT cars, when they appeared in the early Sixties, shared this displacement, though the OSCA version of the engine was a bit different, with forged connecting rods and other tweaks for race duty. Fiat sold thousands of Fiat-Oscas, but sales of the OSCA 1600GT coupes (most fetchingly bodied by Zagato as on the GTZ above) barely brought OSCA's total career production tally to 200. In 1963 the brothers sold OSCA to the MV Agusta motorcycle firm, and the last OSCA was built by the end of 1967.
*Footnote: For a survey of OSCA history beginning with the founding Maserati brothers, see our post entitled "Almost Famous" in the archives for April 20, 2016. We had a look at an attempt to revive the OSCA (nameplate anyway) with a mid-mounted Subaru flat four in "The Etceterini Files Part 16---OSCA Dromos and Jiotto Caspita: Subaru's Distant Cousins", posted October 28, 2018. And we recounted the story of the OSCA's mechanical cousin, France's Gordini, in "The Etceterini Files Part 6---Gordini: French Connection, Chicago Subplot" in our post for March 27, 2016.
Photo credits:
Top thru 3rd image (OSCA insignia + 2 monochrome shots): oscaownersgroup.com
4th: Linda LaFond
5th: Rapley Classic Cars
6th thru 10th: the author
11th: LCDR Jonathan Asbury, USN
12th: the author
13th: italianedacorsa.it
14th & 15th: carrozzieri-italiani.com
16th & 17th: vwvortex.com
18th: Wikimedia
19th: classiccarcatalogue.com
20th: the author
21th & 22nd: oscaownersgroup.com
Bottom: the author
