The role of the Carrozzeria

Over 2000 cars in 7 years: more or less 1 car a day.
I didn't said that Touring wasn't able to set up the wires. Everything depends on what Maserati asked for: a 100% or a 90% complete body. We must to think with a late '50s mind and not see the process under a modern point of view. Things were more simple in the past than today.
If you still have some doubts, send an e-mail to Mr. Cozza: he is the "Maserati living Bible".

 

Trev, if you have photos that shed light on this discussion, would you kindly post them ?

If you look at pages 74-75 of Maserati Road Cars by Crump and de la Rive Box, you will see "The factory jig-built 3500 chassis . . . [with] main centre tubing . . . supplied by one of Orsi's outside manufacturing companies". On the opposite page is a photo with the caption "Then came the welded steel panel supports for the critical areas". The photo shows the chassis with firewall, rear inner fenders, inner sills and outriggers at front and rear to carry the bodywork. The engine, driveline and suspension are not yet installed, but clearly the factory prepared the understructure for the coachbuilders. Lancia built up Flaminias in the same manner.

I can assert with confidence that the A6 series of Maseratis was delivered to coachbuilders as a rolling chassis with the engine and drivetrain installed, both from contemporary publications and from taking apart/restoring them. For example, here is a page from an article in a 1947 issue of Interauto (thank you Paolo!). This is the traditional arrangement, as can also be seen in many photos of early Ferraris.

With traditional and soon-to-be-obsolete coachbuilders like Touring and Vignale, I cannot imagine any reason why this longstanding practice would change for the 3500, unlike later unibody cars.

Although I've met Mr. Cozza, this issue does not trouble me enough to ask him about it.

Ivan, I believe that the chassis were placed on dollies to create a stable working platform. It would not be possible to drop bodywork on a chassis flexing on its own suspension, although I do believe the suspension was already installed. The photo above at Touring and contemporaneous photos at Zagato show cars both on dollies and their own wheels. I believe that the wheels from the factory-built rolling chassis were reinstalled after the main bodywork was attached. I believe that the line of Flaminia convertibles in the photo above are receiving their final trimming, not repair.

Don
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the maserati sektion of this site is so great !! info/docutainment at the highest level.

 

Well, this will be interesting. Mandarano law # 12 states "A lot is lost in the translation"

I for one would like to see what you asked him, before I can interpret what he says for an answer.
Perhaps you can post your question to him.
Ciao,
FGM

 

Ivan,
When I see Fabio on the 4th of Sept I will ask him about this.
I think I already know the answer.
FGM

 

Lost in translation . . .

It's not apparent to me who mated the chassis and body, nor the answer to our burning question of when the engine was installed. It's also implausible to me that the process for a body-on-frame 3500 would be "identical" to a unibody Mistral, and unclear whether Touring or Maserati performed the role of Officine Padane with the Mistral.

Frank, we await enlightenment. Seems like the basis for an interesting article.

Don

PS - Ivan, thanks for trying.

 

You are correct about one thing. "A lot IS lost in the translation"
I will be visiting both Touring and Maserati in The next few days and will attempt to seek some additional answers to this puzzle.
FGM

 

The Italian job...

 

I found this interesting article in a 1969 issue of a spanish magazine named "Cuatroruedas", I believe it was the spanish version of the "Quattoruote" italian magazine. I hope you like it.

Cheers!

Alejandro
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I think we must to consider better the agreement between Maserati and the coachbuilder. Another sad factor is touring was totally exposed with the banks in that period, because the interruption of the rootes groups agreement in 1963.

 

Yes, but it doesn't necessarily end with the contract between Maserati and for instance Vignale. Vignale or Touring could have given out work to subcontractors, like on the attached pictures: you see Sebrings and Triumph Italias (cars wearing the Vignale badge!), under production not at Vignale's, but at O.To. Car, Torino. A company which was probably a bit more industrialised than Vignale. Later they also built the Merak for Ital Design (see photograph), probably Boras as well (they're into tooling machines nowadays). It's been a kind of a cottage industry, whoever had production capacities could do the work.
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Great photos! I like the Merak....

 

Here is one from Ghia 68 or 69?

no motors in the cars on this pic.
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For unibody construction, that makes sense. Giuliettas were made in the same manner.

 

Ghibli and the left. Mangusta on the right?

 

O.TO.CAR is a small company situated less than 800 meters from the Vignale factory. I don't know how many Sebring bodies they produced for Vignale. Because i'm a little bit expert about the history of the Turin coachbuilders, i know the subcontractors were hired during the production emergencies. For example if Vignale bodied 30 Fiats a day, they couldn't produced 5 Sebrings and 2 Italias at the same time (on 3 different lines). So Vignale called a subcontractor to continue the job. But this situation changed year by year, so the 1961 production was different from the 1963 production.
We are still talking about small productions made by craftsmen not used to a mass production. You have to consider, just to make a comparison, that the Lancia plant in Chivasso, 1 million of square meters big, produced 150 Flavia and Fulvias a day, in the same years and full-time with 3 work shifts.

 

Unfortunately the coachbuilder production hasn't a standard, it depends on too many factors and every coachbuilder was differently equipped. Consider that a good body production (assembly, paint and upholstery) was 3/5 completed bodies a day in that period. Probably, because the orders, 10 bodies a day with 1 subcontractor or 2 during some periods of the year. A yearly production amounted to nearly 220 working days in Italy in that period. I haven't the data of the assembly in Modena but this could be helpful i think:
the 3500GT Touring has been introduced at Geneva motor show (March 1957). Maserati got the orders and commissioned the bodies to Touring, meanwhile Touring fitted a couple of cars for every motor shows (Geneva, Turin, Paris, London and Brussels)). In 1958 Maserati sold 119 cars while the highest peak was in 1961 with 500 cars. The total amount was 1981 bodies made by Touring. We could say Touring assembled less than 1 body a day in 1958 and more or less 3 in 1961. But this statement isn't true enough, i think, because is uneconomical. Think about the weekly expeditions (by lorries only), the size of the warehouses in Milan and in Modena for the suppliers (how many tyres? how many cables? how many cans of paint? etc.), the extra working force to hire (piece-workers of course). I think Maserati commissioned a minimum of 10 bodies a month in the first period and a maximum of 25 in the best period.
The same thing happened with Vignale, in a smaller scale of course: 245 convertibles from January 1960 to 1964 and 348 Sebring I series from January 1963 to 1965.

 

Just to make clear the world of the subcontractors in Turin. When i went to the primary school in 1970, the Fiat 124 sport coupè II series was produced at the Fiat Lingotto plant. In my district, the same of the Lingotto, an unknown craftsman , probably a retired worker, chromed the frame of the deflectors in a small workshop located in the court of a building where presumebly he lived. I saw him every morning during my school itinerary putting the frames in a tank. I think he chromed 50/60 frames a day.
This is just a sample to understand how the CAR has been built in Turin, where 50% of the population was involved in the production, at different levels of course.