Sensational Lister LFT-666 for sale

You can always trust Jaguar to come through with a V8 brute once in a while. The F-Type line-up is full of them, launching with a 5.0-litre supercharged engine in 2013, followed by the manic, 575hp SVR a few years later. There have been numerous specials since, such as the D-Type-inspired Project 7 and retro-liveried P575, with the R 75 marking the XK120’s 75th anniversary last year. But if prefer your Big Cat a little more untamed, then you could do a lot worse than give Lister a call.

Not that you’ve been able to do that for the last decade-or-so, mind. The British firm, which started life as a motorsport constructor, turned its hand to tuning Jaguars in the mid-’80s by dropping a 7.0-litre V12 – then the largest combustion engine ever fitted to a road car – under the ultra-long bonnet of the XJ-S. It then returned to building race cars, with the equally beefy-engined Storm claiming the FIA GT championship title in 2001. After a brief prototype outing at Le Mans, the company took a decade-long hiatus before it was acquired in 2012 by now-CEO Lawrence Whittaker who, once again, revived it as a Jaguar tuner.

Its first port of call was to give the F-Type SVR a bit of a spruce-up. The aptly-named Lister Thunder dialled up the 5.0-litre supercharged V8 to a monstrous 675hp, slashing the F-Type’s 0-62mph time to just 3.2 seconds and upping its top speed to 208mph in the process. It received a particularly mean makeover, too, consisting of larger wheels with many spokes, a green shroud around the grille and a tarmac-hugging ride height. Admittedly, it did look as though it’d had a bunch of aftermarket bits thrown at it without much consideration given to cohesion – but it was every bit as bonkers as we’d hoped a modern-day Lister would be.

What we have here, however, is a meaner, more polished version of the Thunder. The follow-up, renamed the LFT-666 (for Lister F-Type with 666bhp), matched the impressive performance of its predecessor and paired it with an improved suite of exterior upgrades including a carbon fibre splitter, diffuser, boot lip and a set of 21-inch wheels. All the Jaguar badges were replaced by Lister’s own, while the interior was given a spruce up with Nappa leather seats; company name embroidered into the headrests, of course. Lister also dabbled with the F-Type’s suspension, though the fully-adjustable KW suspension on this car seems to be (very serious) aftermarket upgrade. 

Still, Lister only built 99 examples of the LFT, with each car wearing a plaque denoting its place in the production line. This particular example is number two, and served as the firm’s marketing and press car, meaning it has everything the company had to offer bolted to it. On that note, it’s surprisingly understated by Lister standards, doing away with the coloured grille and eye-popping yellow stripes that appear on some other LFTs. Perhaps this is the car the company should have named the Stealth instead of the hugely aggressive (and not remotely stealthy) 675hp upgrade package it devised for the F-Pace SVR.

Anyway, this naturally comes at a fair old price. That’s £85,995 to be precise. Bear in mind, you can pick up an F-Type R for less than a VW Golf nowadays, with this red 2014 car costing just £29,895 – and that’s with a full Jaguar service history too. However, you’ll still be forking out the best part of £130k for a Project 7, and you’ll need an extra £20k to bag this R 75 Convertible. Pricey as this LFT-666 is, you can comfortably spend a lot more bagging a special F-Type. We’ll take the Lister and spend the rest on fuel. It’ll need it.