Michael Satterfield
TGR Staff
This Lister-Jaguar is believed to be the only extant Jaguar-powered Works ‘Knobbly’ of just three cars built in 1958. Brian Lister started to build sports and racing cars in the early 1950s out of the back of his father’s wrought-iron shop, using MG and Bristol engines which he stuffed into the lightest chassis he could manage to build. Racer Archie Scott-Brown drove one of these early Lister-Bristols to 5th overall and 1st in class at Silverstone in 1954, defeating the factory Jaguar C-Types and putting Lister on the map as a serious constructor.
In 1957 Lister customer Norman Hillwood insisted that his car be powered by the 3.4-liter Jaguar XK engine and the first Lister-Jaguar was born. Jag powered Listers began winning races even besting Roy Salvadori’s Aston Martin DBR1 at Oulton Park. In 1958 the Konbbly was unveiled and the new lower profile, lower draft Lister would win the 1958 SCCA championship, and Briggs Cunningham, Jim Hall, and Carroll Shelby all had Listers in their fleets. But Archie Scott-Brown’s tragic death at Spa in 1958 turned Brian Lister off from racing, by 1959 he had withdrawn from racing and sold off the remaining cars and effectively shuttering Lister.
This car was raced extensively in Europe before coming to the US in the early 60s where it campaigned in the SCCA, before returning to the UK in 1970. The car was fully restored and was used for historic racing in the UK through the 1990s before being sold to a collector in the US in the early 2000s. Chassis BHL 119 is being offered at RM Sotheby’s Arizona auction on January 22nd, 2021.
