Maserati GT2 Stradale Wears the Eldorado Colors Again – and This Livery Has a Real Story Behind It

Special liveries are easy to make and even easier to forget. Change the paint, add a few stripes, mention “heritage” somewhere in the press release and the job is more or less done.

Maserati‘s latest GT2 Stradale is rather more interesting than that.

Unveiled at the 2026 TUTTO BENE Hillclimb on Lake Maggiore, this one-off GT2 Stradale wears a modern interpretation of the famous Maserati Eldorado colors from 1958. And parked beside it at the event was the original car that inspired it.

That original is the Maserati 420/M/58, better known simply as the Eldorado. Its cream-colored body carried enormous black Eldorado lettering, a smiling cowboy logo and number 10 for Stirling Moss.

It looked unusual for a reason.

At the time, racing cars were traditionally painted in national colors. Italian machines were red, British ones green and so on. The Eldorado abandoned that convention because ice-cream manufacturer Eldorado was paying to put its identity on the car.

Today, seeing a race car covered in sponsor branding is completely ordinary. In 1958, it wasn’t. Maserati describes the Eldorado as the first European single-seater sponsored by a company from outside the automotive industry.

The modern GT2 Stradale brings back number 10, the Eldorado lettering, cowboy emblem and Italian tricolor detailing. Maserati has also fitted a black hood carrying the original Tipo 26 badge, carbon-fiber elements and black center-lock wheels.

It’s quite a combination, although the history saves it from feeling like a random exercise in retro decoration.

The road car chosen for the tribute makes sense too. The GT2 Stradale is essentially Maserati’s attempt to move some of its GT2 race-car character back onto public roads. That makes a motorsport livery considerably more appropriate here than it would be on a Grecale parked outside a fashion boutique.

There’s another anniversary behind the project. Maserati is celebrating 100 years of the Trident emblem and a century since the Tipo 26 became the first car to race with that badge. The Tipo 26 won its class at the Targa Florio in 1926.

Maserati has already used another historic race car for this commemorative series. A previous livery shown at Monza in May looked back to the 250F, the Formula One car associated with Juan Manuel Fangio and Moss.

Now it’s Eldorado’s turn.

The original itself deserves the attention. Its 4.2-liter V8 produced 410 hp at 8,000 rpm in 1958, while the entire car weighed only 758 kg. Moss raced it at Monza before a steering failure ended the final heat with a crash. The car survived, was later modified for an Indianapolis 500 attempt and eventually returned to its original cream livery.

Nearly seven decades later, the cowboy is back on a Maserati, and, in an era overflowing with “heritage editions,” this is one of the rare cases where the story behind the paint is arguably as interesting as the car wearing it.