Gerry Lister

Gerry Lister is synonymous with Volvo in Australian motorsport. He and brother Tony cofounded the rst Volvo dealership in New South Wales with British and Continental Motors in 1961. He rst raced a Volvo at Bathurst in 1966, though unfortunately his co-driver Graham Porter crashed their 122S on top of the mountain. Another special 122S performed extremely well on Sydney’s tracks before meeting its Waterloo in a spectacular barrel roll in practice for the 1968 Surfers Paradise 12 Hour race.

For 1968 Lister raced a Volvo 142 in improved production races but it was too heavy and too slow. The answer was to ditch the 2.0-litre four-cylinder Volvo engine in favour of a mighty Chevrolet 5.0-litre V8 engine straight out of a McLaren M10B Formula 5000. This infamous brute of a car was nothing if not spectacular in the burgeoning Sydney sports sedan scene of the early 1970s.

Lister was a versatile driver, and no more so in the 1968 London to Sydney Marathon, where in a factory-prepared Volvo 144 he

nished a creditable thirteenth outright in the arduous event. In the 1970 Ampol Trial he drove a factory Volvo 142S with ‘Golden Tonsils’ John Laws and nished 12th outright in a eld of 230 competitors.

In total Lister had six starts in the Great Race, he shared with David Seldon in a Volvo in ’67 and in a Torana XU-1 in 1972 and Fiat 125S with Ron Kearns in 1969-70. However his best outright result would be in the Falcon GS 351 in 1971.