Lister is a familiar name on the British sports car scene, even though they have not made a road car bearing the three oriental swords badge (that’s what it looks like to me) in 25 years.
They were famous for making the ‘Knobbly’ Jaguar, which was an updated design based on the classic D-Type, with various modernized solutions brought to it over the years. You may also have heard about Lister Storm supercars/racing cars too, which at the time of its launch, came with the biggest V12 engine ever fitted to a production car (a seven-liter unit sourced from Jaguar).
Now, the company has announced its return, and the rejoining of all three different entities it had ended up splitting into. We have George Lister Engineering of Cambridge, Brian Lister Light Engineering and Lister Storm, all of which “have been reunited into one organisation that will herald the return of one of the greatest sports racing cars of the 1950’s,” the aforementioned Jaguar-based, classic-looking model.
They’re also investing in state of the art equipment, as well as production site in the historically-relevant town of Cambridge, the place where they originally started out from.
The main investor, Lawrence Whittaker, CEO of Warranty Wise, who bought the brand in May of this year, explained what the intention behind the revival was:
“Anyone with a fondness for British sports car manufacturing and with an understanding of Lister’s remarkable heritage should rightly be excited by this news. The Lister ‘Knobbly’ was a powerful, giant-killing racing car in its heyday, and with all the expertise we have brought together for this project, I can promise that the new Lister will be a fabulously exciting and desirable car,” he said.
Now, if you still don’t know what we’re on about here, perhaps Tiff Needell will do a better job of explaining what Lister (and in particular the racing version of the Lister Storm) is about via the video posted after the gallery collection.
By Andrei Nedelea
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