Lister was founded in 1954 in Cambridge by Brian Lister. He started off building his first sports cars using tubular chassis and MG engine which was inspired by John Cooper.
The race car in question started at the British Empire Trophy in Oulton Park the same year, but because of a few outdated bits, Brian improved his creation by replacing the drums by discs and swapping the engine for a Bristol 2L which drastically improved the performance. This resulted in the car finishing 1st in the 2L class at the supporting race of the 1954 Silverstone Grand Prix, and placing 5th overall only beaten by factory Aston Martins.
But the one to be remembered would be the Lister Knobbly… In 2016, Lister announced the production of 10 Knobbly Stirling Moss Edition replica of the race car that Sir Moss drove at Silverstone in 1958, and were sold through the Royal Automobile Club London and will be personally handed by Sir Stirling Moss.
Additionally, a more “conventional” road version of the Knobbly offering a 3.8L and 4.2L Jaguar straight 6 are available and range from £225K to £300K depending on the config. For that, you basically get a late 50’s race car spec with a powerplant very similar to the D-Type according to Lister. And with 330hp and 787kg, needless to say that they must be quite sensational to drive!
The 80’s kids generation are familiar with the Storm model which featured the largest production engine at the time, a 7L V12 Jaguar. The Storm was created as a result of great sales figures from Jaguar XJS tuning by Laurence Pearce. Indeed, Laurence tuned over 90 XJS for racing purposes, allowing them to reach over 200mph and charging clients £100K for the work performed.
The Storm was born in 1993 and was aimed for competition, it managed to win the 2000 FIA GT Championship but struggled to be consistent with results or match the performance of more recent race cars like the CLK-GTR or the Porsche GT1, and as 2007 the racing career of the Storm came to an end.
As of today, only 3 of the 4 road cars ever built still exists. That makes the Porsche GT1 or Mercedes CLK-GTR look like mass production cars, but granted that they for sure have a different appeal…
