Peter Blond with Lister-Jaguar BHL104 at Aintree in 1959 with the body that replaced the original knobbly shape but during this race the car was once more crashed.
Derek Hood’s multi-crashed Lister Jaguar (BHL104) now back to its original pristine condition with the proper “knobbly” body as it was fifty years ago when David Murray took delivery.
A Smashing Lister
Of all the drivers who drove for Ecurie Ecosse the American, Masten Gregory, was not only one of the most colourful but also one of the most expensive. He is credited with writing off two cars and severely damaging a third. Imagine my surprise then when I was introduced to Derek Hood, boss of J D Classics who has quite a collection of interesting Jaguars and other makes. The car that interested me, however, was his Lister Jaguar. This was one of the cars in which Masten Gregory had one of his greatest accidents. It happened at Silverstone and the car was Lister-Jaguar chassis number BHL 104. It is a car that had an interesting career. It was the fourth customer Lister-Jaguar and sent to Merchiston Mews as a kit of parts where Wilkie Wilkinson and Stan Sproat built the car ready to race. There is a funny story surrounding David Murray and Brian Lister. David ordered a brand new Lister for the 1958 season and had been allocated the first production car with a �knobbly� body. Indeed Doug Nye in his book � Powered by Jaguar� comments that the original chassis number of the car was to be EE101. However, Brian Lister received an urgent order for a Lister-Jaguar from American entrant Briggs Cunningham so Lister sent the �Ecosse� car to Cunningham with the chassis number BHL 101. This is why the car David Murray actually received in kit form was the fourth car and not the first car.
I think David Murray was rather pleased to have signed Masten Gregory for the team as he was a hard charging driver with thick-lensed spectacles and a laconic turn of phrase.
The car was registered 341SG and Gregory had this huge accident in the support sports car race for the British Grand Prix that year when the car ended up on top of the earth banking with his team mate Ninian Sanderson�s D type Jaguar dragged into the accident and ending up beside him.
The wreck was brought back to Edinburgh, split up and kept aside for spares. Later in 1958, after the race at Monza where Ecurie Ecosse fielded their unique Lister-Jaguar single seater ( Chassis BHL109), this car was converted into a sports car which was also crashed by Gregory and so the front end of old 104 that was lying about, was grafted on to the rear section of 109. The rebuilt car did not last long as Peter Blond crashed it at Aintree and it was rebuilt with the old single seater Lister body and cycle wings for leading hill climber Phil Scragg who in turn sold it to Keith Schellenberg. Today that car is owned by Rod Jolley and still is in Monzanapolis trim.
As only part of the wreckage of 104 had been incorporated into 109, the rest of 104 was sold to John Pearson the well known Jaguar restorer and was rebuilt by him into the �knobbly� Lister that appeared at Silverstone to be driven by Derek Hood.
The car looked superb and exactly as it had been before it was originally crashed by Masten Gregory and so becomes yet another interesting addition to the list of Ecurie Ecosse cars that are still around and are still being raced. Derek is thrilled to have the car even though its history is somewhat tortured and we hope to see a lot more of it competing with all the other Ecosse cars.