The Maserati Mistral was introduced in 1963 as the successor to the 3500 GT and represented an important transition for the company. Designed by Pietro Frua, it combined a compact fastback body with Maserati’s twin-cam straight-six, an engine derived from the company’s competition experience. The 4.0-litre version sat at the top of the range and was also the final development of this six-cylinder engine before Maserati increasingly turned to V8 power. The large curved rear glass, long bonnet and relatively restrained detailing make the Mistral one of the more distinctive Maserati GTs of the 1960s.

This 1968 Mistral 4.0 Coupe has recently emerged from an estate collection and is being sold as a restoration project. It is currently finished in grey primer with a black interior and appears substantially complete, but is not running. The seller describes the body as solid and very straight. More importantly, the original engine is no longer present: the car is explicitly described as non-matching-numbers. The installed engine is nevertheless said to be a correct 4.0-litre Mistral unit, which makes the project considerably more coherent than one requiring the search for an appropriate powerplant.

The photographs show a car that has already undergone some degree of disassembly or previous preparation rather than an untouched barn find. The exterior is in primer, while the engine bay, chassis components and cabin display considerable age and surface corrosion. The black leather seats and much of the dashboard and instrumentation remain in place, as do the Borrani-style wire wheels and characteristic exterior trim. Before restoration, the completeness of the Frua-specific components should be carefully established, together with the identity of the replacement engine and the condition beneath the primer. Given the cost of restoring a hand-built Maserati of this period, the apparently complete and straight starting point is important, but so is understanding exactly what previous work has already been carried out. Find it for sale at $57,500 here in Astoria, NY.