1959 Maserati Tipo 61 Birdcage Sets a $4.24M World Record at Pebble BeachA piece of Maserati's racing history changed hands at the 2026 Pebble Beach Auctions, where the first production Tipo 61 Birdcage sold for $4,240,000, a new world record for the model. The sale was handled by Gooding Christie's, and the result caps a remarkable run for a car that spent its early life racing on dusty West Coast circuits rather than sitting in a museum.Chassis 2452 isn't just any Birdcage. It was the very first Tipo 61 built, one of only 17 ever produced and one of just 22 Birdcages (Tipo 60 and 61 combined) that Maserati assembled before turning its attention elsewhere. Finished in white with blue racing stripes and long associated with car number 238, this example was campaigned across California and the West from 1959 through 1963, picking up wins at Palm Springs, Willow Springs, Vaca Valley, Santa Barbara, Oakland, Pomona, Reno, and Laguna Seca. Behind the wheel over the years were Bob Drake, Jim Connor, Jim Hall, Bill Krause, and Ken Miles, a lineup of period talent that reads like a who's-who of American road racing's golden age.The Tipo 61 earned its nickname from its structure rather than its shape. Maserati engineer Giulio Alfieri built the chassis from roughly 200 small-diameter chromoly tubes welded into an intricate lattice, a design so distinctive that even Jay Leno has spent time behind the wheel of one. Paired with a 2.9-liter straight-six making around 250 horsepower and weighing barely over half a ton, the Birdcage was good enough to beat far larger-engined competition, and it stands as the last Maserati sports racer to win at a top international level until the MC12 arrived decades later.AdvertisementAdvertisementThis particular Birdcage has been with the same owner since 1998, when it last changed hands at a Monterey auction for $937,500. Restored in the 1970s and kept largely original underneath its older paint, it was one of dozens of noteworthy lots Gooding Christie's brought to this year's Pebble Beach sale, a week that also saw everything from a humble Toyota Land Cruiser to million-dollar Bentleys cross the block. Factory racing Maseratis like the Birdcage occupy a different world than the marque's road cars, and that gap shows up clearly whenever a works competition car like a 1954 Maserati A6GCS comes up for sale.Hagerty's valuation tools track nearly 200 different Maserati variants, from the Quattroporte sedan to the 5000 GT grand tourer, but a car like the Tipo 61 sits outside that price guide entirely. Bespoke, ultra-low-production factory racers rarely trade through the wider collector market Hagerty's data typically captures; instead, their value gets set almost exclusively at auctions like this one. Considering the jump from $937,500 in 1998 to $4.24 million in 2026, and how that figure compares to similarly significant Ferrari racers from the same era, this result looks less like speculation and more like the market catching up to how significant this particular Birdcage really is.Gooding Christie's next major sale heads to New York for the Retromobile New York Auctions on November 20 and 21, 2026. Whether another Birdcage or a comparable piece of racing history turns up there remains to be seen, but this Pebble Beach result has set a new benchmark for what the Tipo 61 model can bring at auction.⚡️ Read the full article on MotoriousSign up for the Motorious Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.