MARIO TOZZI-CONDIVI
Italian wheeler-dealer who made Great Britain an essential outpost of Maserati’s empire
FOR MORE THAN 50 years, the line of communication between Maserati and Britain crackled through the razor-sharp mind of expat wheeler-dealer Mario Tozzi-Condivi.
Details of his early life are sketchy. He was born in Rome in 1924 and became a World War Two fighter pilot, surviving unscathed. Towards the end of the war he spent a week marooned in a mountain village with, by chance, one Dr De Minicis of the Automobile Club d’Italia. That led to him meeting Maserati proprietor Adolfo Orsi. Mario then departed for London. With an excellent grasp of English, he chased his fortune as Orsi’s contract man, seeking customers for Maserati’s batteries, horns, spark plugs and machine tools.
The trade went both ways, though. Maserati was planning its 3500GT for a 1957 launch, and it needed components that weren’t available in Italy. ‘No-one else but Ferrari built live-axle cars anyway,’ says Anthony Cazalet, who knew Mario well. ‘So he organised a lot of the British parts Maserati used. It was all Jaguar stuff, really, including the Dunlop disc brakes. Even the engine was almost an aluminium XK.’
The 3500’s heater established him as an efficient fixer. The original, designed by Maserati engineer Giulio Alfieri, was feeble and costly; Mario negotiated cheaper, ready-made heaters from Smiths Industries in London. ‘Alfieri was livid,’ laughs Cazalet. ‘He wouldn’t speak to Orsi for three months!’
A Lancashire car dealer won the British Maserati car concession, but the business folded and Mario moved in. He did this with London dealer Taylor & Crawley, the set-up giving the wily Italian half the business. This stake became part of Mario’s Alfa Romeo agency Chipstead Motors. The company took over Roy Salvadori’s Elmbridge Motors (Roy had been in cahoots with Mario for years after acting as a go-between for Cooper in Italy, identifying, according to historian Doug Nye, races with the juiciest starting money), and attracted investment from racing-mad Marks & Spencer millionaire Jonathan Sieff.
In 1965, Chipstead Motors splashed £200,000 of M&S socks-and-pants profit to buy the Cooper Car Co, propelling the partners into Formula 1. Mario struck an engine deal that saw Maserati’s legendary V12 dusted off, revamped and installed in a Cooper chassis, and the car brought victories to John Surtees and Pedro Rodriguez.
And then Sieff and Salvadori ousted Mario from their empire. Cazalet says they forced him out when he couldn’t raise the cash to buy his stock options over 48 hours. But no-one was going to do Mario over. His Maserati pals ensured the concession transferred to his new company, MTC Cars in Westbourne Grove. When Citroën insisted Maserati sales be handled from Slough in 1969, Mario switched to importing De Tomasos, and Maserati eventually returned to his clutches in 1975.
The public knew Mario because Maserati and De Tomaso test cars, featured in magazines, carried his treasured MAR 10 numberplates. And he was something of the ladies’ man, enjoying the swinging ’60s from his Little Venice bachelor pad. He dated actress Tracy Reid, who appeared in Dr Strangelove, wed a mysterious older woman and had two children, but the marriage collapsed and Mario settled down with Ryvita ad star Diana Cave-Hawkes.
Rapid expansion led MTC into bankruptcy in 1981, but he managed to offload its assets to Subaru importer Robert Edmiston. Mario bounced back in 1986, bringing the right-hand drive Maserati Biturbo to the UK; Cazalet was appointed technical director. However, they sold only 100 cars before currency swings and terrible quality caused the new company to go bust too. Mario bought a house in Tenterden, Kent. Yet calls from the old country – to help run Maserati and Moto Guzzi for Alejandro De Tomaso – saw him spending more time in Italy, or jetting round the world troubleshooting. As a board member, he frequently deputised for De Tomaso after the ailing tycoon’s stroke in 1993. Mario’s daughter Loretta administered his own affairs from the Isle of Man.
Mario died of cancer in 2000 in a Modena hospital – he’d been a ferocious chain-smoker for decades. People who worked for him loved his warmth, and were always astonished at his energy. ‘He treated me like a surrogate son,’ recalls Anthony Cazalet. The awful irony of that statement is that Mario’s own son Richard flew from Australia to be at his father’s deathbed, and returned with an inheritance that he spent on a speedboat. Shortly afterwards, he dashed it on rocks and killed himself.
‘MARIO STRUCK A DEAL THAT SAW MASERATI’S V12 DUSTED OFF AND INSTALLED IN A COOPER CHASSIS’