The Maserati Mistral, named after a cold northerly wind of southern France, was the successor to the iconic 3500 GT, it was also the first in a series of classic Maseratis to be given the name of a wind. It was offered both in Coupe and Spyder form. 830 coupes and 120 Spyders were built in total.

The Mistral is the last model from the "Casa del Tridente" or “House of the Trident” to have the famous straight six cylinder, twin-spark, double overhead cam engine, as fitted to the Maserati 250F Grand Prix cars that won 8 Grand Prix between 1954 and 1960 and one F1 World Championship in 1957 driven by Juan Manuel Fangio. The engine also featured hemispherical combustion chambers and was fed by a Lucas indirect fuel injection system which was novelty at the time for Italian car manufacturers. Although the Lucas fuel injection system enhances performance, quite a few owners, especially in the U.S. have converted their cars to Weber carburetors due to difficulties in tuning the system properly. Maserati subsequently moved on to V8 engines for their later production cars. There were three engine variants fitted to the Mistral; 3500, 3700 and 4,000cc. The most sought after derivative is the 4000cc model.

The body which had been designed by Pietro Frua was first shown in a preview at the Salone Internazionale dell'Automobile di Torino in November 1963. The Maserati Mistral is generally considered as one of the most beautiful Maserati of all time. It is also often confused to the very similar looking but larger and more powerful AC Frua, which was a Frua design as well.