Maserati Birdcage 75
Maserati Birdcage 75
The Birdcage 75 was another anniversary special, this time celebrating 75 years of Pininfarina in 2005. However, in a car-design world awash with retro pastiches at the time, Pininfarina chief ctylist Ken Okuyama resisted the temptation to create a modernised take on a classic Maserati. Instead, he revisited one of the marque’s defining engineering themes – the mid-engined Tipo 63-65 versions of the spindly ‘Birdcage’ sports-racers of 1961-65, nicknamed after the intricate spaceframe tubing visible through the windscreen – with modern racing technology.
Okuyama began with a Maserati MC12 GT1, and reworked the racer as a road car. Rather than conventional doors, the entire upper clamshell, incorporating the Perspex-dome roof, cantilevered upwards, exposing the underlying chassis as it went.
The sheer cleanliness and stark modernity of the Birdcage 75’s lines, at a time when car design seemed to be suffering from a plague of over-detailing, drew universal praise. Although it was never intended for production – the Perspex dome would instantly rule it out on safety grounds – its themes, such as heads-up projected displays and a return to simplicity of line, started to recur after the 2008 recession. Electric supercars in particular followed its lead, with Birdcage 75 cues noticeable on the likes of the Rimac C-two, Nio EP9 and Pininfarina’s own creation, the Battista.
But its greatest influence arrived in 2020 in pre-production form. The Maserati MC20, Maserati’s first mid-engined supercar since the demise of the MC12, incorporates a host of overt Birdcage 75 influences, most notably a domelike roof, albeit incorporating conventional doors, and the tuckedunder side profile. It may have been 15 years in the making, but the MC20 is proof that the Birdcage 75 is still the shape of things to come.
‘15 years later, the Pininfarina Birdcage 75 is still the shape of things to come’