In 2026 Maserati's trident is a hundred years old. It is one of the few car badges that has barely changed in a century, and it was drawn by the one Maserati brother who never built a car.
The artist in the family
The Maserati brothers founded their company in Bologna in 1914. Alfieri, Ettore and Ernesto were engineers and racing drivers. Mario was a painter.
When the brothers prepared their first car under their own name, the Tipo 26, they needed a symbol for it. Mario found one a few hundred meters from the workshop: the Fountain of Neptune in Piazza Maggiore, a sixteenth-century bronze by the Flemish sculptor Giambologna, in which the sea god holds a three-pronged trident. His first drawing, made in 1925, is kept in the Maserati archive in Modena.
The badge took the red and blue of the city of Bologna.
First time out
The trident appeared in public for the first time on 25 April 1926, on the nose of the Tipo 26 at the Targa Florio in Sicily. Alfieri Maserati drove it and won the 1,500 cc class. The badge and the company's racing record started on the same day.
The trident has been reshaped several times since — an oval in the 1930s, a gold background in 1980 — and in 2020, with the MC20, Maserati dropped the red and kept only white and a deep blue.
Neptune under the hood
The connection did not stay on the badge. The V6 that Maserati developed for the MC20, and which now powers the GranTurismo and GranCabrio Trofeo, is called Nettuno — Italian for Neptune. A car named for a Bologna statue carries its engine named for the same one.
The models
COBI's Maserati GranTurismo Trofeo, set 24577, and Maserati GranCabrio Trofeo, set 24578, are 1:35 models of the coupe in blue and the convertible in red, each built from 105 blocks under an official Maserati license, with printed markings and rubber tires.
Both are available to pre-order. The expected shipping month is shown on each product page, and you can cancel any time before it ships.
See the COBI Maserati GranTurismo Trofeo, set 24577
See the COBI Maserati GranCabrio Trofeo, set 24578
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