From a small business park in Leatherhead in Surrey came a famous motor racing name that recaptured the glory days of sporting success. Lister Cars, always closely associated with Jaguar powerplants, was a brand with huge heritage. It took Archie Scott Brown to glory but it had disappeared from the racing radar in the 1960s.
The drive and enthusiasm of Laurence Pearce, a man already steeped in a passion for Jaguar’s products, took over the name of the rekindled firm in the mid-1980s and set about climbing to the top of motorsport.
The Lister Storm GT car returned the firm to Le Mans in 1995 and it went on to conquer British GT and then the World in the FIA GT Championship in 2000 with Julian Bailey and Jamie Campbell-Walter at the controls.
After dabbling in the prototype world, Pearce saw the uneven struggle that his squad was facing against the deep pockets of the manufacturer entries in the topflight and decided to cut his losses.
He has since relocated to Portugal and has been responsible for the upkeep of several competition cars as well as some rebuilds. He is able to pick and choose his workload, which keeps his interest burning and stokes the passion which brought him to the pitwall at Le Mans in the first place.
We found him in relaxed mode and ready to lift the lid on some fascinating stories behind the British underdog’s rise to the top. We are grateful for his time.
Question: How did your engineering career start?
James Hilton
Via email
Laurence Pearce: “My father, Warren Pearce, races E-types. I was always around racing cars, from about 1963 when I was 10. I fell in love with the engineering side of things right from my early days.”
MN: So was it the motor racing or the engineering that got you the most interested?
LP: “Dad had a big crash in 1970, just before I was 17. I had left school by then. He was an engineer and a car tuner and had a business repairing and modifying E-types in particular, and he did very well. But all of a sudden he couldn’t work, so I had to take the reins of the business in effect. At the time, I probably really didn’t want to do that, but a lot of people get forced into that situation, I suppose.
“I never really got on with my old man. Around then, early 1970s, they were difficult times for all sorts of reasons. Originally dad was based in central Chelsea, and he worked for a lot of people that were well-known and well-heeled.
“In Chelsea, the premises were very difficult to work out of because they were an old Mews building. Unfortunately, he had the idea to move to Kingston in Surrey. When he moved there he had a much better workshop but the business changed because people didn’t want to drive out there from the middle of London. It had been a good business because, of course, in those days, cars were completely unreliable. No one had a car that didn’t go in the garage every couple of weeks.
“The move really hit the business and there was also the fact that because he was racing himself and a lot of his clients were racing against him, they wouldn’t go to him to
