Maserati has named a prototype MC20 after the great Sir Stirling Moss

Maserati says it is a homage to the driver who gave the Italian Scuderia so many famous wins, but it is also surely the first time there has ever been a special edition of a car still hiding underneath its camouflage...

Yes, this is the much-vaunted new Maser sports car – the car to take the firm back racing, following in the tyre tracks of the championship-winning MC12 of 16 years ago, but also, we fervently hope, to be an enticing new fast road car. But it is also still just a prototype, still (as mentioned) wearing its disguise, and as such not a car you are able to buy.

Maybe it is a little opportunistic of Maserati so quickly to associate its new machine with Sir Stirling, but we’re sure its heart is in the right place. And Sir Stirling – never one to poo-poo commercial possibilities – would no doubt agree. And he did love his Masers, cars like the 250F that gave him a famous flag-to-flag victory at the Monaco Grand Prix 64 years ago this week.

Another Maser he approved of was the “Eldorado” special that Maserati built for him to drive in the 1958 “Monzanapolis” showdown between F1 and IndyCar. Sir Stirling didn’t win the three-heat, 500-mile special – he came home seventh despite crashing in the last heat when his steering broke ­– and the “Race of Two Worlds” didn’t catch on. But the Maserati he drove has gone down in history – as the first single-seat racecar to feature a sponsor’s livery. Eldorado was an American ice cream brand.

And it is this car – so familiar of course from so many visits to Goodwood motorsport events over the years – that provides the inspiration for the livery of the MC20, as one look at how Sir Stirling’s signature has been rendered on the car proves. Unlike the original racer, the MC20 doesn’t have the face of a smiling cowboy on it though…

The Eldorado is shown in the picture alongside an 250F and the special MC20, the three cars photographed inside the Viale Ciro Menotti plant in Modena where the MC20 will be built.

As well as the 250F and Eldorado, Sir Stirling also competed in the Maserati Tipo 60 Birdcage, Tipo 61 and 300 S sports car (which he once said “may be my favourite sports-racing car ever”) and the 450S ­– which he called “possibly the most unpleasant car I ever raced”.

What Sir Stirling, who died aged 90 on April 12^th 2020, would have made of the MC20 when eventually it is wheeled out minus its disguise and ready for action we shall never know. Would he like its “advanced electric powertrain” (a hybridised six-pot is most likely), its grown-up Alfa 4C nature and all-Italian development and manufacture?

Says Maserati: “We hope that Sir Stirling Moss would have liked the new MC20: a car that fully embodies Maserati's truest values in terms of the performance, driving pleasure and innovative contents superlatively expressed in all Trident brand models”.

Historical images courtesy of Motorsport Images.