Jaguar XKSS to Rise From the Ashes

When fire destroyed Jaguar’s Browns Lane plant on Feb. 12, 1957, nine of the 25 existing XKSS models were consumed by flames. The spartan roadster — a road going version of the famous D-type race car — went on to become a legend and the remaining 16 examples are among the most valuable collector cars on the market.

Now, the lost nine are going to rise from the ashes, as Jaguar plans to use their serial numbers on a limited run of exact replicas, mirroring last year’s E-type Lightweight.

For most of us, the XKSS is connected with the image of Steve McQueen tearing up the back roads around Los Angles, as immortalized in famous series of black-and-white photographs. But even without the celebrity connection, the XKSS was a very special and important car, even though it was born of a business failure. When Jaguar’s works team withdrew from competition at the end of 1956 season, the company still had some D-type racing cars in stock.

The interest among privateer teams wasn’t sufficient to unload them all, and so a clever plan was devised. Remaining D-types will be fitted with some luxury items – like second seat and door, windows, windscreen with wipers or even a folding roof and bumpers – and sold as roadgoing sports cars, perfect for “weekend racers” in America.

The new car, called the XKSS, was eligible for the production sport car class, and represented a perfect choice for wealthy Americans who wanted to drive their own cars to the track, race them, and then drive them back home again.

The fascinating story and great racing pedigree of the XKSS guaranteed it a place in the Pantheon of automotive legends. And with the recent surge in price and popularity of classic sports cars, the value of the legendary racing Jag for the street shot upwards as well. According to data from Hagerty Insurance, you could buy a concours condition XKSS for a measly $2 million in 2006. Now, the same car would cost you a whopping fifteen million dollars.

Such demand, which may or may not be result of an investment bubble, makes for a perfect time to recreate the nine cars that were lost. And Jaguar, encouraged with the success of last year’s series of E-type Lightweight continuation cars, decided to do just that. All nine cars will be “constructed to the exact specifications as those 16 first made in 1957,” states the company’s website, and will be offered to select customers at a reasonable (compared with what the original would fetch) price of “over Ł1 million” (more than $1.5 million).

It is expected that even these “continuation cars” will make for a sound investment, even though, if the prices of DB4 GT Zagato Sanction II cars (finished from the existing parts in 1988, a quarter century after the originals were built) are anything to go by, their prices will never reach the astonishing heights of the original 16 cars.

[Images: Jaguar Land Rover]