Two camshafts, twin-spark, 3.5-liters, and 235 horsepower. The Maserati Mistral Spyder is one of the rarest vehicles from the Casa del Tridente, with only 125 examples manufactured between 1963 and 1970. Of those 125 chassis, only 12 were manufactured with this engine, the smallest of the three powerplants utilized during the vehicle’s model run. It produced 235bhp at 5,500 rpm from the 3.5-liter powerplant, which was a close relative to the Tipo 250F engine which powered Manuel Fangio to Maserati’s single Formula 1 championship in 1957.

The inline-six-cylinder, dual-overhead-camshaft engine uses a cylinder head with  hemispherical combustion chambers, a dual timing-chain arrangement, and two spark plugs per cylinder charged by the Marelli distributor. Extremely rare for the time is the Lucas indirect fuel injection system; Maserati was an early-adopter of these.

With so few cars on the road 45-plus-years later, and so few examples of this engine in circulation to begin with, we wonder what this engine might be used for. Would it be viable in a restoration? If the engine has been separated from its chassis, and there is another one of the original 12 cars undergoing restoration, then yes.

Obviously it would not be a numbers-matching restoration, which would drive the value down some. There appears to be a fair number of missing parts and pieces, and what is there doesn’t look to be in ideal shape. But if you’re restoring a Maserati that’s five decades old with an engine you bought on eBay, it’s possible you don’t care much about matching numbers. It’s not like you can go to the factory and buy another one of these engines; perhaps given its fair condition as evidenced by the photographs, the price is right for the right buyer. Regardless of the price, this is an interesting piece of history.