Only 17 were ever built. This one raced West Coast circuits for four seasons before anyone thought to call it a collectible, and it just became the most expensive of its kind ever sold.
Maserati confirmed on September 3 that a 1959 Tipo 61 'Birdcage,' chassis 2452, sold for $4,240,000 at Gooding Christie's Pebble Beach Auctions, a new world record for the model. The sale itself took place during Monterey Car Week in August; this week's announcement made it official through Maserati's own press channels.
The First of Its Kind, Sold as the Most Valuable
Chassis 2452 wasn't just any Birdcage. It was the very first Tipo 61 built, one of only 17 ever produced, out of just 22 Birdcages combining both the Tipo 60 and Tipo 61 before Maserati moved on to other programs. Finished in white with blue racing stripes under coachwork by Carrozzeria Allegretti, the car spent 1959 through 1963 racing across California and the West, picking up wins at Palm Springs, Willow Springs, Vaca Valley, Santa Barbara, Oakland, Pomona, Reno, and Laguna Seca.
Its driver roster reads like a who's who of the era's West Coast racing scene: Bob Drake, Jim Connor, Jim Hall, Bill Krause, and Ken Miles all took turns behind the wheel. A restoration in the 1970s kept much of the car original beneath its paint, and it carried a presale estimate of $3 million to $4 million into Pebble Beach, a range the final result comfortably cleared.
Why It's Called a Birdcage at All
The nickname comes from the chassis itself: a lightweight tubular space frame built from more than 200 thin steel tubes welded together, designed by Maserati's chief engineer Giulio Alfieri at a moment when front-engined sports racers were being challenged by newer mid-engine designs. The result was less a conventional race car chassis than an engineering showcase, one collectors and historians have long described as closer to an object of design than a piece of racing equipment.
The Formula Holds Again
Documented racing history under known drivers, on known circuits, across multiple seasons. Genuine scarcity within a production run of just 17 examples. And a design pedigree distinctive enough that the car has been treated as much as sculpture as machinery. It's the same combination that's driven headline results across this market all year, this time in a car whose chassis was engineered to weigh as little as physics would allow.