Personal

Car Stuff

Extras

1959-model Lister-Jaguar 'Costin' Sports-Racing Two-Seater

Lot No: 240 - A Sale of Important Sports, Competition and Collectors' Motor Cars and Fine Automobilia, 1 Sep 2006 at Goodwood Revival, Chichester, Sussex
Chassis no. BHL 2/59
Sold for £144,500 inclusive of Buyer's Premium

The illustrious story of Brian Lister’s Cambridge-based sports-racing car marque is well known and it is detailed in full in ‘Powered by Jaguar’, the authoritative work on the subject by Doug Nye (Motor Racing Publications, new edition 2005). This particular car was sold to its last long-term owner as one of the two Lister-Jaguar works team cars which competed in the Le Masn 24-Hours endurance classic of 1959. As such it is liveried in the very dark British Racing Green and pale daffodil yellow colours adopted by Brian Lister for the new season after the death of his great friend and original works driver Archie Scott Brown at the Grands Prix de Spa meeting in Belgium the previous year.

This car incorporates all manner of rare and now much sought-after Lister and Jaguar sports-racing car components and features, and in the documentation folder accompanying it there are copies of the FIA Historic Vehicle Identity Form No. 136 which was awarded to it on August 8, 1984. The car’s period classification was in the contemporary Class E Historic ‘Period Improved’. Notably the car incorporates what is described as a D-Type 6-cylinder XK racing engine, it rides on magnesium D-Type Dunlop wheels and its ownership history is listed as follows:

“1959 Lister works car – 1960 sold to USA – 1982 return to UK (John Pearson) – 1983 Chris Drake.”

Major events in which the car took part are then listed as follows:

“1959 Easter Goodwood 1st I. Bueb – Oulton Park British Empire Trophy 5th I. Bueb – Crystal Palace Whit-Monday 4th I. Bueb – British GP Aintree Meeting 5th I. Bueb – 1959 works car for Le Mans drivers I. Bueb/B. Halford (retired 9th hour lying 4th).”

The documentation file also contains copies of an Historic Sports Car Club Vehicle Identity Form, citing original Registration Number is having been ‘MVE 303’, overall weight as ‘18½-cwt’ and repeating the history as recorded on the FIA paperwork.

During 1957 Brian Lister’s prototype Lister-Jaguar with Maurice Gomm-crafted ‘flat-iron’ bodywork had set entirely new performance standards throughout the British sports car racing scene, driven by the brilliant Scott Brown. For 1958 Brian Lister created the International Appendix J-regulation ‘Knobbly’ Lister-Jaguar production design to capitalise upon the success of that 1957 season. The ‘Knobbly’ Lister-Jaguar became an enduring classic, capable of eating the factory’s legendary semi-monocoque-chassised D-Types for breakfast and causing intense difficulties for the works Aston Martin team cars.

For the 1959 season Brian Lister sought better aerodynamic performance from far more sleekly-bodied cars than the humpy, lumpy ‘Knobblies’. To achieve this target he employed consultant aerodynamicist Frank Costin of Lotus and Vanwall body design fame. Costin created the body style worn by this particular car offered here, sacrificing frontal area for a sleek, low drag-inducing body form which was intended to enhance overall performance.

The Cambridge works team assembled two cars for its own use, to be driven this new season by the experienced Ivor Bueb and by Peter Blond. ‘Ivor the Driver’ did particularly well with the new cars, but opposition within their contemporary class was more formidable than ever before thanks to the advent not only of the latest 2- and 2½-litre Climax FPF-powered lightweight Lotus 15s but also to the similarly-powered, and rear-engined Cooper Monacos. This new breed of cars were very much lighter than the big, handsome Lister-Jaguars, and on all but the fastest circuits they demonstrated an advantage over them.

The ‘Costin’-bodied Listers could be powered by either Jaguar or Chevrolet V8 engines to customer choice. The works cars, naturally, were equipped with Jaguar engines supertuned by Brian Lister’s Cambridge associate, specialist tuning expert Don Moore, in conjunction with the Coventry factory.

Meanwhile, chassis serial ‘BHL 2/59’ is apparently recorded in the Le Mans Automobile Club de l’Ouest records rather than plain ‘BHL 2’ - without the year suffix – which had been used by previous editions of the Cambridge works team’s cars. By 1959 there was no longer the necessity to road-register sports-racing cars in the UK if they were not to be used on the public road. Previously, some form of road-registration had been a necessity whether use was on road or track.

Sadly, Ivor Bueb was fatally injured when he crashed a Formula 2 Cooper at Clermont-Ferrand that mid-summer. Brian Lister also had a second works team ‘Costin’ car severely damaged in an accident at Brands Hatch from which number two driver Peter Blond was fortunate to escape without serious injury. These disasters caused Mr Lister to rethink his entire future, and he took the immediate decision to withdraw from racing and close down his motor manufacturing business forthwith. His ex-Le Mans works car ‘BHL2/59’ was then sold, certainly via the Chequered Flag (Chiswick) dealership in West London to a US customer, possibly Dave Ridenour, of 31 Belmont Avenue, San Francisco 17, California who campaigned an “ex-Bueb” Costin Lister-Chevrolet into 1960, having advertised in March 1960 ‘Road & Track’ “3.8 works Jaguar engine” – presumably the original ex-works unit removed from the ‘Bueb’ car . Circumstantially, had Ridenour’s car been ‘the other’ Ivor Bueb Costin-bodied Lister-Jaguar in the US it would have been the Cunningham team’s 1959 Sebring entry. However, since Bueb’s co-driver on that occasion had been Stirling Moss, one asks the question “whose name would a subsequent vendor choose to attach to his gleaming ‘race car’, Bueb…or Moss?”. We doubt the choice would have been ‘Ivor the Driver’s.

Many years later – in the early 1980s - this car serialled ‘BHL 2/59’ eventually emerged in the UK …described as being “complete with a very nice dry-sump wide-angle head D-Type engine” which Chris Drake sold to Peter Kaus for his Rosso Bianco Collection. The car has since appeared – we believe – in at least one Historic event, but has otherwise seen very little use, having been preserved upon long-term display in the Collection’s museum at Aschaffenberg, Germany.

In common with the other Collection cars offered in this Sale, we very much recommend complete mechanical inspection and careful preparation before any serious attempt be made either to start or to run the car in earnest.

But overall this is, by any practical standards, an extremely handsome Costin-bodied Lister-Jaguar. It is one for which FIA and HSCC identity papers have been issued in the past, and in the right hands it is certainly a potential front-runner in the most hard-fought and charismatic of all present-day Historic racing categories.