Chris Amon leads the field in a street race in Dunedin in 1962 at the wheel of the Maserati 250F that launched his successful career. Next month he will be reunited with the car at the New Zealand Grand Prix. Photograph:  Allan Dick collection. Southwards Museum restorations manager John Bellamore with the Maserati’s engine covers. The Maserati 250F has undergone a massive restoration to bring it back to racing strength.

Legendary New Zealand racing driver, Chris Amon, will be reunited with the Maserati 250F racing car that kick-started his career when he demonstrates the fully restored car at this year's New Zealand Grand Prix, which takes place at the Manfield race track on 13-14 February.

The Maserati 250F was only the second racing car raced by Amon and he was just 17 years old when he got behind the wheel of a car that had already been driven by two legends of the sport, Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins. Behind the wheel of the 250F, dubbed the greatest racing car of all time, Amon won at Levin and was placed 11th in the 1962 New Zealand Grand Prix.

Amon is in no doubt that it was the Maserati that provided the springboard for his international career. “It was that car that got me to Europe,” explains Amon. “Reg Parnell (the British team owner who took Amon overseas) saw me drifting it at Wigram and told me later he'd never seen a 250F driven like that since Fangio retired."

Amon’s 250F has now been fully restored by the Southwards Car Museum from a static display car to one that is fully able to relive its glory days and Chris Amon is relishing being able to, once again, get behind the wheel of ‘his’ Maserati 250F and provide spectators at the 2010 New Zealand Grand Prix with a glimpse of motorsport history in action.

Half a decade after the fact, the memory of slipping behind the wheel of one of the most famous Grand Prix cars of all time remains fresh in Chris Amon’s memory. “It was exactly how I imagined how a proper Grand Prix car will be – and it did everything you would imagine a proper Grand Prix car would do.” 

Sitting into the wide cockpit, behind that massive six-cylinder engine, the Maserati 250F was unlike any other car he’d known. But that just made it all the more exciting to the then 17-year-old. “It was something of a beast, I suppose,” he recalls of the highly-prized Southward Collection star machine that is set to be demonstrated at Manfeild during the New Zealand Grand Prix on February 13-14. “But it smelt right, it spun the wheels and it sounded great. I couldn’t wait to drive it.”

He can fully understand why the cigar-bodied 2.5-litre single-seater is today revered as the last of the great world championship front-engined racers. So highly regarded, in fact, it was recently named the greatest racer of all time by a British enthusiast magazine. Highly valued, too – just 26 were built and surviving examples are worth millions.

Its place in history is well known. Introduced for the 1954 F1 season, the 250F  - F for Formula One, 250 in reference to the 2.5-litre engine - competed in a total of 46 F1 championship events between 1954 and 1958, during which time it won 55 races. It is particularly associated with one of Amon’s boyhood heroes, period great Juan Manual Fangio of Argentina. As the best balanced of all front engined Grand Prix racers, it perfectly suited Fangio's high speed four wheel drifts – a style Amon was to emulate. It took the five-time world champion to victory in what is regarded as one of the greatest races of all time, on Germany’s vaunted Nürburgring where he overcame a 50-second deficit in just 20 laps, breaking the lap record 10 times, taking the lead on the final lap.

The 250F remained in use by customer teams until 1960 and privateers continued to favour the type even after it was outmoded by the new-era rear-engined cars. Amon can understand why: It’s a car with a special something, he says.  Indeed, of all the hundreds of cars he has raced over the years, the Maserati is among the few he wished he’d been able to keep. “It’s a car with huge character. There aren’t that many cars from my career that I can say I wished could have kept – a Ferrari from 1967, the Ford I won in at Le Man, two Matra F1 cars. But, yes, the Maserati as well. That’s special.”

Amon’s car has been on static display for many years and, like the collection’s Ferrari Monza that ran at Manfeild at the 2009 NZGP, has only been brought back to full health through to an exhaustive and expensive rebuild. The painstaking restoration has included the first comprehensive rebuild of the engine since its racing days.

The story of how Amon got to drive one of the archetypal racers of the 1950s is interesting. Amazingly, it was on a used car yard run by Wellington motoring identity Tony Shelley, also a keen racer of the period. The machine had been bought new from the factory by British team BRM as a test bed, and altered to suit. It remains the only 250F in which the oil tank was located beside the driver, and just one of two with disc brakes. It placed third in the Argentine Grand Prix of 1955 with Mike Hawthorne, and also provided another Englishman, Peter Collins, with a victory that year, then subsequently came to New Zealand. “Tony had inherited in some deal he had done – it had been traded for a road car, as I recall – and so it was sitting in the lot.”

Amon’s parents and the Shelleys knew each other socially, through both having properties in Paraparaumu. Somehow the car came up in conversation, and the canny salesman saw an opportunity. “Tony said he’d bring the car up to Levin and let me take it for a lap – I think, in hindsight, he already had an eye for a sale, though probably he wanted to have a few laps in it as well.” When Amon’s turn came, he was under strict parental instruction to go easy. With an engine capable of producing up to 270 horsepower in full tune, and a top speed of around 240kmh, it was not to be taken lightly. Even so, he immediately got a feel, and a liking, for the car. “It did exactly what I imagined – I gave it a bit of throttle and it spun the tyres, and the engine sound was just amazing.”

The deal was done, and soon they were racing. It was just the Scott's Ferry-born farmboy's second 'proper' racing car, following a 1500cc Cooper. The differences were huge. “The Cooper was quick, too, but somehow more sanitary, much tamer, probably calmer … the Maserati did everything. It sounded right, it leaked oil. It had character. And I have to say that, in the first few races I did, I was very much a passenger!” The Maserati provided a taste for lairy oversteer and he immediately revelled in the challenge it laid down. He became a consummate ‘drifter’ half a century before the skill became a sport in its own right. "I loved that car. You could steer it on the throttle. In fact, the quickest way around a corner was to throw it into a big slide and hold it there on the power.” Everything was special, even the fuel - petrol heavily laced with methanol, with 10 percent acetone, a dollop of benzol and a touch of castor oil. "I remember the fuel made excellent paint-stripper," Amon chuckled in memory. "It was a hugely powerful brew."

He and the car parted company in 1963. Amon headed to Europe to enjoy a long and illustrious international career, notably leading the Ferrari team for three seasons in the late 1960s, achieving New Zealand Grand Prix wins for the Italian thoroughbred marque in 1968 and 1969. He retired from Formula One in 1976, having taken part in 102 Grands Prix, scoring 83 championship points and reaching the podium 11 times. Today he is remembered as Ferrari's favourite test driver and also a central figure in Ford's famous win in the 1966 Le Mans 24-hour sportscar race. His contemporary Jackie Stewart rated him as one of the world's foremost drivers and Jochen Rindt considered him a true rival.

Amon remains a key figure in New Zealand motorsport, no more so than with the Toyota Racing Series, the high-powered wings and slicks single-seater category now contesting the NZGP. The Chris Amon Trophy is awarded each year to the overall Toyota Racing Series champion. The Maserati remained with the Amon family, sitting in a shed in Hunterville, until Sir Len Southward bought it in 1967, thinking it might look good in the museum he was thinking about. He paid several hundred pounds for it in a deal sealed outside a pub. About 10 years later, Amon sought to buy it back, but by then the value had risen tremendously. “We talked about it, and got to the point where he was happy for me to have it if I could get him a four-cylinder BRM from a collection in England, which didn’t quite work out,” Amon recalls wistfully. 

The Maserati 250F in the New Zealand Grand Prix

A Maserati 250F won the second ever New Zealand Grand Prix in 1955 with Prince B Bira behind the wheel, ahead of two Ferraris, leading from the start to the finish. Stirling Moss repeated this result for Maserati in 1956 behind the wheel of another 250F. The Ferrari/Maserati battle was reversed in 1957 when Stan Jones brought a 250F home in third place behind two Ferraris. In 1958 Ross Jensen a Maseratri 250F to second place in the NZ Grand Prix behind a Jack Brabham driven Cooper Climax and ahead of two Ferraris. The 1959 New Zealand Grand Prix saw American legend Carroll Shelby finish in fourth place in a Maserati 250F, followed by 250Fs driven by Ross Jensen and Bib Stillwell. By 1960 the Maserati 250F was nearing the end of its legendary history, with the mid-engined era underway, but in the New Zealand Grand Prix the 250F held on to fifth and sixth positions with Johnny Mansel and Arnold Glass behind the wheel of their Maseratis. Chris Amon took his Maserati 250F to 11th place in the 1962 New Zealand Grand Prix, providing the Maserati 250F with its last finish in the New Zealand Grand  Prix.

Chris Amon’s Results in the Maserati 250F