Lister is a strange company. While best known for building odd Jaguar-based race cars in the good old days, it primarily gets by building modified street car versions of current Jaguar sports cars and SUVs. The company, a few years ago, began offering continuation versions of its famous Knobbly sports racer, and it’ll even sell you a kit to assemble in your own garage. But a couple of days ago, Lister co-owner and CEO Lawrence Whittaker posted a rendering of a modern Lister Knobbly to Twitter.
It’s nothing short of extraordinary.
There’s no telling exactly what will be under the bonnet of this rolling sculpture at the crux of modern and vintage. The original Knobbly cars were powered by 3.4-liter Jaguar race inline-6 engines, but it would make sense for the modern Knobbly to source its power from a current Jaguar engine, so perhaps the 5-liter V8 in the F-type would be more likely. Lister currently builds a 660 horsepower tuned version of the F-type R, which they call the Lister Thunder LFT-666. Similar power levels in a lighter carbon-heavy open top sports car chassis would certainly be invigorating.
Then again, just over a year ago, Whittaker also teased the upcoming Lister Storm II and nothing more has been heard of that project since.
Via: Autoblog