Half of 60th anniversary Lister Jaguars sold out

If you fall into the Generation X demographic, born somewhere about 1961 to 1981, you might have never seen anything from the Lister car company. You might have never pined for a Lister. You might not know that the company returned as Lister Cars Ltd in 1986. But the company is back again--bought by Warrantywise earlier this year--with a new version of the Lister Jaguar Knobbly sports car.

The Knobbly is being built with the same jigs used more than a half century ago, alongside much of same engineering team, including Dick Barton, Colin “Chippy” Crisp and Graham Hutton.

The cars will be hand-built in Cambridge in England and fitted with the race-proven Jaguar D-Type 3.8-liter inline six motor featuring its wide-angle cylinder head, dry-sump lubrication and a genuine Jaguar D-Type gearbox.

The inline six makes 330 hp at 6,750 rpm and 295 lb-ft of torque. The 0-60 mph sprint should take 4.3 seconds, according to Lister, and the car will hit 100 mph in 10.1 seconds. It has a dry weight of only 1,736 pounds.

The new cars will adhere to the FIA/HTP Appendix K racing guidelines, which will allow it to enter historic contests. Plans are still going forward with a series of Lister sponsored race meetings to run in 2015.

Road-going versions, at least in Europe and the U.K., can be bought for about $425,000, converted from British pounds; racing versions clock in around $410,000.

The company has a storied racing pedigree. In the five years after its inception, the company produced only 50 original cars, but they were responsible for more than 2,000 wins and podiums.

“2014 is a very special year for us, as it celebrates 60 years since Brian Lister built the first Lister car at George Lister Engineering. Today, we are still hand-building cars at George Lister Engineering in Cambridge and use many of the traditional methods that were used in 1954, as well as one or two of the original engineers,” said Lawrence Whittaker, managing director of Lister Cars. “It’s fantastic to think that Lister has a 60-year history as an all-British owned car maker and that it now has a fantastic future ahead of it.”

New Listers will join the company’s registry, and even non-factory cars can be certified once brought in and looked over.

Lister says numbers of the 2014 60th Anniversary Lister Jaguar are limited, and 50 percent are already sold out. The first cars will leave the factory in April of 2014.

Email info@listercars.com for more information, or go to the Lister Cars Website.

Lister

Check out the Lister brochure below, use the tools to scroll and zoom.

Lister Brochure

By Jake Lingeman