Founded in 1954 as George Lister Engineering Limited and rebranded in 2013 as the Lister Motor Company Ltd., the British sportscar manufacturer is something your old man surely heard about if he was into cars when he was young. And good jolly, the plucky Brits are back with a car based on their most iconic model.
If you’re not from the UK and don’t hold a driving license, it is necessary to point out that Lister loved motorsport back in the day, with the most iconic racer they’ve made coming in the form of the 1958 Lister-Jaguar Knobbly. The zenith of dominance Lister sold in May 2014 for a whopping 1.17 million euros at auction and boasts with a Jaguar D-Type Le Mans-specification XK 3.8-liter inline six-cylinder mill.
Knobbly is also a synonym for not well-proportioned and pleasing in shape. I’m not really interested about how the motorsport crowd back then regarded the Knobbly as an ugly machine, but looking at its successor, Lister made a fine-looking barchetta-styled car with tons of character oozing through.
If you go back to early 2014, you may remember that Lister Cars of Cambridge announced it will rejuvenate the Knobbly and make about six cars per year for FIA historic racing and road-going fun.
Finally, Lister Cars brought the road-going Knobbly at the Autosport International auto show, developed after the original drawings and made on the manufacturing jigs Lister used for the 1958 racer.
Celebrating Lister’s 60th anniversary, the reborn Knobbly is built to the very same specification as the original 1958. Powered by a race-prepared Jaguar XK 3.8 straight-six with 330 horsepower on tap, all cars are built to meet FIA racing regulations, with owners able to compete in historic race meetings.
Despite following an original design laid out more than 55 years ago, the 2015 Lister Knobbly can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph (96 km/h) in 4.3 seconds and hit a top speed of 181 mph (291 km/h). Lister has already received an overwhelming response to its limited run and all 10 cars are already spoken for.
As a result, Lister Cars of Cambridge considers building a further three individual final edition models, each of which will celebrate the competition history of the 1958 Knobbly prototype racecar.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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