The 1962 Geneva and Paris motor show car, the first of only two Frua-bodied 5000 GTs
1962 Maserati 5000 GT by Frua
Chassis No. 103.064

• Fascinating history with French Maserati importer and racing team owner Col Simone, the Aga Khan and King Saud of Saudi Arabia when exiled in Egypt
• An older, fully documented restoration by award-winning Modenese craftsmen Bacchelli & Villa and Giuseppe Candini managed by Dr Adolfo Orsi
• An opportunity to own one of Maserati’s most celebrated models
• With fuel-injected engine, five-speed gearbox and disc brakes, one of the last cars built
• EU taxes paid

British magazine The Motor noted its “ingeniously low waistline ... with a screen of exceptional depth”. Writing in 1963, legendary American journalist Henry Manney III reported that, “Maserati showed a monster 5-litre V-8 Frua coupe with suede interior, which could only with justification be driven by a luscious redhead, nude except for a sable coat”.

In an extraordinary twist of fate, on a regular car shopping trip to Modena made by Shah Reza Pahlavi in late 1958, the absolute ruler of Iran – and luxury car obsessive – was handed a brochure by
Omer Orsi and Giulio Alfieri of Maserati for the company’s recently launched 3500 GT road car. Slipped inside it was a plainer leaflet for the Trident’s staggeringly fast 450S sports-racer, no longer eligible for World Championship racing after a year at the top driven by greats such as Juan Manuel Fangio, Jean Behra and Stirling Moss.

The Shah liked the 3500 GT, but envisaged a far more exclusive, immensely fast and powerful version powered by the mighty four- cam, quad-carburettor motor from the 450S. To Maserati, in dire financial straits after an expensive year on the racetracks and problems with an export order of machine tools, it was an opportunity to earn serious money on a one-off commission while also selling one of its highly developed and costly racing engines, of which it had several in stock.

A price was agreed – 7.5 million lire, nearly 3 million more than a 3500 GT – and for this Ing. Alfieri guaranteed a top speed of 280kmh (174mph). The 3500 GT’s chassis was adapted to carry the much larger V8 and bespoke bodywork by Touring of Milan, the coachbuilder selected by the Shah.

Under the bonnet sat a proper racing 450S engine with four big Webers, but made tamer by enlarging it from 4,478cc to 4,953cc and reducing the compression ratio. A four-speed ZF gearbox replaced the noisy Colotti racing unit.

Anderloni’s styling for Touring, with design accents borrowed from classical Persian architecture, was precisely what the Shah wanted, and the completed car was delivered to the royal palace’s garage in Tehran.

Another car was built and exhibited at the Turin Show in 1959. The 5000 GT ‘Persia’, as it was initially named, become the most expensive car in Maserati’s catalogue, available to order at immense cost with bespoke bodywork from a variety of the best Italian coachbuilders including Bertone, Ghia, Pinin Farina and Allemano, at 22 examples the most numerous. It was prodigiously fast in a straight line. Veteran road tester Guerino Bertocchi took journalist Hans Tanner for a ride in the Turin Show car and Tanner timed it at 172.4mph. Road & Track recorded a Ferrari 410 Superamerica at 165mph flat out.

Thirty-four 5000 GTs with original 450S engines were built, including one effectively sold twice with two chassis numbers. Production stopped when components for the race-derived engines ran out.

Carrozzeria Frua produced just two 5000 GTs, both on the later platform of a fuel-injected engine with chain-driven camshafts, ZF five-speed transmission and all-round Girling disc brakes.

This car is the first one built by Frua and made its debut at the March 1962 Geneva Motor Show.

This Motor Car

Chassis 103.064 – at the time bearing the numbers ‘103.048’– stunned visitors to the March 1962 Geneva Motor Show, a forward-thinking vison in gold metallic (Oro Longchamps Metallizzato) with an opulent deerskin interior. It was the first treatment of a 5000 GT by master stylist Pietro Frua. Compared with designs from other carrozzerie, Frua’s submission for a car suitable for a king was known for its low waistline and generous use of glass in the side windows.

The Maserati Trident badge on the nose was prominent, and unusual in that Frua had made it concave, fitting it into the opening of a bonnet air scoop.

After Geneva, still gold, the car was used by former WW2 intelligence officer and Resistance hero Colonel ‘Johnny’ Simone. In partnership with Jean Thépenier, the Franco-American racing driver was Maserati’s representative in France. Simone’s passion for motor racing led him to finance several Maserati projects at the Le Mans 24 Hours. For 1962, the team entered a Tipo 151 for Trintignant/Bianchi – the car was running 4th when it crashed to retirement.

The Geneva Show 5000 GT became the Colonel’s preferred long-distance transport between Modena, Paris and Le Mans, acting as a high-speed express par excellence, as well as gaining useful publicity for the company.

Shãh Karim al-Husayni the Aga Khan IV, the spiritual leader of the Ismailis, a Shi’ite Muslim sect, was never as obsessed with luxury cars as the Shah of Iran. He was and still is, though, a man of great wealth ($13.3 billion in 2013, according to Vanity Fair) and fine taste, owning racehorses, private jets, stud farms and several extensive estates including Aiglemont in northern France, the country in which he mainly resides. Coincidentally, he was educated at the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, Shah Reza Pahlavi’s alma mater.

During early summer 1962, the Aga Khan frequently borrowed Colonel Simone’s big Maserati and he was so taken with the car that he commissioned one from the Modenese factory, the other Frua 5000 GT, chassis 103.060.

After Le Mans, this 5000 GT returned to Modena to be thoroughly prepared for exhibition at the Paris Motor Show in October 1962. It carried a price of 15 million French Francs, making it the most expensive automobile in the world.

British magazine The Motor noted its “ingeniously low waistline ... with a screen of exceptional depth”. Writing in 1963, legendary American journalist Henry Manney III reported that, “Maserati showed a monster 5-litre V-8 Frua coupe with suede interior, which could only with justification be driven by a luscious redhead, nude except for a sable coat”.

In summer 1963 the car was shown again, this time in Italy at the Concorso di Eleganza per Automobili organised by the Automobile Club of Belluno at the Miramonti Majestic Grand Hotel in Cortina d'Ampezzo. A report in the Swiss magazine Automobil Revue covering the event at the Hotel Majestic, notes its stunning paintwork and mentions the car winning a special award. Whilst in Maserati’s hands it bore the Modena registration MO 78028.

Later that year, the factory effectively rebuilt chassis 103.048 and renumbered it 103.064 for sale as a new car in deep ruby red metallic. The old MO 78028 registration was taken out of circulation on 4 October. On 26 October it was registered Roma 676609 for Antonio Alecce, president of the Istituto Farmacoterapico Italiano, Via Salaria, Rome, who paid 7,500,000 lire for the new ‘064’ on 15 November 1963.

The car returned to Maserati in the mid 1960s for further work in preparation for another high-profile owner, King Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, then living in exile in Cairo. The car was a gift from his son, Prince Abdel Majid bin-Saud.

During its refurbishment for the King, Maserati made many small changes to the car, including a modified bonnet with two additional air intakes to the rear; smaller Maserati trident in the air intake opening above the grille; side turn signals on the front wings as seen on the Quattroporte; dual headlights; and three chrome trim sections on the ventilation openings on the front wings.

King Saud lived a lavish life in Egypt until the Six-Day War of 1967, when General Nasser, the fiery head of the Egyptian government, was forced into a rapprochement with his former opponents in the Arab world, the Saudi royal family. King Saud was ordered to leave Cairo (to a luxury hotel in Athens) and the expensive Maserati was impounded by the Egyptian government for tax and import levies. It remained in storage in Cairo for decades, still bearing the Italian registration Roma 676609. After its sale at a local government auction for the equivalent of £23,000, the new owner, Omar Fathy Rifa’a al-Tahtawi, contacted a young Simon Kidston at Bonhams & Brooks who consigned it to the company’s May 2000 Monaco auction. The odometer read 12,700km – in all likelihood the total covered in some 38 years. The car had not been seen by the factory since January 1967, but was totally original, complete and very optimistically capable of running.

Noted Texan Maserati collector John Bookout purchased ‘103.064’ in Monaco for some £222,000: “An extraordinary result in every respect that exceeded even our wildest expectations,” Simon commented to the press at the time – and commissioned a total restoration in the Modena region that was to take four years. Expert chassis and bodywork firm Bacchelli & Villa worked with ex-Maserati mechanic almost without equal Giuseppe Candini to rebuild the car as it was displayed in Geneva in March 1962: in gold, with its deerskin interior painstakingly restored. Marque expert Adolfo Orsi, whose family owned the Maserati company in the post-War years, managed the project.

On completion, ‘103.064’ was shown at the 2004 Villa d’Este Concorso d’Eleganza where it won a brace of awards. From Bookout, the car passed to the current European owner in March 2013 who, preferring the Paris Motor Show-era specification, had its colour changed back to ruby metallic in Italy. He bought the sister Frua and Aga Khan car, chassis 103.060 only a few months later.

An outing at the September 2013 Schloss-Bensberg Concours d’Elegance resulted in a first in the Frua class and a special award for Most Thrilling Design. That is surely the perfect definition of this Maserati 5000 GT by Frua, a Car of Kings, an oft-used expression but in this case wholly accurate and totally justified.