Antwerp Collection Cars: historic racing Maserati to star at Belgium's brand-new show

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Spring is here and we're all looking forward to warmer weather, longer days and hours of motoring, perhaps with the breeze in our hair, but for now there's still a chill in the air and good weather is far from guaranteed. There's time, we think, to enjoy one more indoor show before the outdoor rally season really gets going, and that's just what we can do thanks to Flanders Collection Cars, organisers of the brand-new Antwerp Classic Salon on April 5-7th.

Flanders Collection Cars has been organising events for historic vehicles in Belgium for more than thirty years, during which time its Classic Salon at the Flanders Expo in Ghent has become a well-known fixture on the calendar, but so popular is it now that it will be accompanied by from this year by a sister show at the Antwerp Expo. Both events take place across 130,000 sq. ft. of floorspace, with more than 150 exhibitors displaying not just historic motor cars, but also spare parts and automobilia.

A highlight of the first Antwerp Classic Salon will be a special display commemorating 110 years of Maserati. Co-ordinated with the assistance of the Maserati Club Belgium, it willbe comprised of twelve cars, of which the star will surely be the 1937 Maserati 6CM. It was not until 1947 that Maserati would being producing road cars. Pre-war, it was all about racing, and Maserati enjoyed great success with a string of straight-eight cars, plus the four-cylinder 4CM. Wishing to field an entry in the 1½-litre voiturette class, Maserati developed the 4CM's engine into a 1,493 c.c. six, which produced one hundred and seventy-five brake horse-power with a Roots supercharger. With hydraulic brakes and torsion-bar independent front suspension, it was a very modern design and, indeed, very competitive. Capable of one hundred and thirty miles per hour, it won numerous races around Europe. Between its launch at the 1936 Milan Motor Show and 1939, a total of twenty-seven were produced.

Chassis 1548 will be in attendance at Antwerp. This car was supplied new in August, 1937, to German privateer racer Herbert Berg, and accordingly finished in German Racing White. Berg raced it prolifically during a brief period of time, including in the 1938 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. It was in the same car that he achieved the best result of his career, finishing second at the 1938 Grand Prix de la Baule, where the winner was in another Maserati. Tragically, twenty-eight-year-old Berg's life was cut short when, away from the motor circuits, he suffered a fall while walking in October, 1938. The Maserati was later acquired by France's Roger Deho, a coachbuilder who happened to enjoy racing, and he altered the bodywork, repainted the car red and drove it in the 1946 Grand Prix de Nice.

Still red today, 1548 would go on to spend many years in Sweden and formed part of a private collection from the late 1980s until the 2010s. In its most recent Dutch ownership, it has been enthusiastically raced once again with appearances at the Grand Prix de Monaco Historique in 2021 and 2022.

This superb exemplar of pre-war voiturette racing has to be worth a look, and there'll be many other exciting cars besides. If your interest extends to post-war cars, there will also be special exhibitions marking 75 years of Abarth and 60 years of the Porsche 911.

The all-new Antwerp Classic Salon takes place in Halls One, Two and Four, Antwerp Expo, Jan van Rijswijklaan 191, 2020 Antwerp, Belgium, on April 5-7th. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit www.flanderscollectioncars.be.

Photographs: Wouter Melissen
 

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