Lister announces hypercar plans

Less than a year after being resurrected as a brand, the British sportscar company's new owners are already talking about challenging the likes of Ferrari and McLaren with an all-new model.

Although Lister is keeping the exact plans under wraps, it has confirmed that in terms of power and performance it wants to rival the crème of the hypercar elite -- so the Ferrari LaFerrari and the Pagani Huayra -- and that it intends to do so by building its own supercharged V12 engine in the hopes of generating 1000bhp and a top speed of around 250mph (400 km/h).

The last Lister to sport a V12 engine was the Lister Storm built back in 1993. It used a modified Jaguar engine which to this day is the largest V12 (7-liters) ever fitted to a production car and due to its astronomically high price -- $350,000 -- only four examples were ever built and only three survive today.

As well as announcing its very ambitious plans, Lister has also released the first concept sketches of the new car and said that it is looking for investors to help take the sketch from the drawing board to reality.

It's a hugely ambitious plan but Lister believes it has what it takes to create what its managing director, Lawrence Whittaker, describes as 'A serious, world-beating new product.'

Founded by Brian Lister back in 1953 the company very quickly rose to motor racing prominence and in particular with the Lister 'Knobbly' Jaguar, a track car based on the D-Type and raced by a host of legends including Sterling Moss.

When its new owners resurrected the firm in 2013 after 20 years away from the track, the first thing they did was put the Knobbly back into very limited hand-built production with a £350,000 ($560,000) asking price.

The move appears to have paid off as the company has been overwhelmed by the response and has already sold nine examples while the re-launched car has also helped to put Lister back on the map.

Whittaker says: 'Our aspiration has always been to return the Lister brand to the forefront of people's minds. The 'Knobbly' project has firmly established that the Lister name still has enormous good will and we know we have a brand with a lot of marketable collateral attached to it. Over the coming years our ambitions are to create a world-beating brand new Hypercar with a list price of somewhere in the region of £2 million ($3.2 million).

'We are currently seeking external investors that have the desire to join us on what promises to be an incredible journey, because if we proceed with our ambitious plans, it is fundamental that the entire project is sufficiently resourced in order to deliver a serious, world-beating new product.'