A 1955 Jaguar Lister 'Flat Iron', qualifying for the Stirling Moss Trophy for pre' 61 Sports Cars at the Silverstone Classic.
The flat-iron Lister-Jaguar - as 'HCH 736' became known - is perhaps the most famous of the non-works/non-Cunningham team cars. As 'the other Lister-Jaguar' run concurrently with the works' famous first prototype that was driven by Archie Scott-Brown through 1958, it was the Dick Walsh-run car which Bruce Halford and Brian Naylor drove at Le Mans, and then in 1959 became the Scottish Border Reivers' team's entry most notably for the youthful Jim Clark, and in which the World's greatest racing driver first developed so much of his supreme skill. Partly because it has been unused for so very many years it has re-emerged as an extremely important, truly historic sports-racing car, and its Clark connection gives it almost iconic status." (Doug Nye, author of ‘Powered by Jaguar’) Far and away the most successful of the many Jaguar-engined, specialist-built sports-racing cars of the late 1950s were those built by Lister, comfortably outweighing the results of similarly-powered machines from other notable and prominent independent constructors such as Cooper, HWM and Tojeiro; indeed, it is for its Coventry-engined machines that Lister became and remains best known. The Cambridge blacksmith concern of George Lister & Sons had graduated into motor sport after Brian Lister, grandson of George, in 1952 began racing the in-house built Asteroid Tojeiro-JAP, using a John Tojeiro chassis, which proved quick, especially when driven by Archie Scott-Brown; it was the car’s successes which convinced Brian that Lister should build its own cars and thereby promote its engineering abilities. With Lister steel tube frame chassis, designed by Brian, wishbone/ coil spring front suspension, coil-sprung, radius arm-located, de Dion rear axle, disc brakes and all enveloping open alloy body, the highly competitive 1,500cc Lister-MG followed in 1953, and then an equally competitive 2,000cc Lister-Bristol and a (though somewhat unreliable) Lister-Maserati, in 1954 and 1956 respectively.
Size: 4573px × 3093px
Location: Silverstone Circuit, Towcester, Northamptonshire, NN12 8TN
Photo credit: © John Gaffen / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 1955, 3781cc, 61, car, cars, circuit, classic, flat, green, historic, iron, jaguar, lister, moss, pre, qualifying, race, silverstone, sports, stirling, trophy
