A Jaguar XKSS that is one of just 16 ever made and the first car of its type to ever come to auction in Europe could sell for £11 million ($14 million).
The car is being sold in London by Sotheby’s RM on November 2.
“Highly significant and historically important”… “The most sought-after of all road-going Jaguars”… “Impeccably preserved”….
The superlatives pile up in describing the 1957-made vehicle.
Jaguar was on top of the motoring world in 1957. The Coventry-based maker won five Le Mans 24-hour races between 1951 and 1957, finishing with a victorious hattrick.
Those races were won by the D-type to which this car is a close relative.
The work of former aeronautical engineer Malcolm Sayer, who created the D-type and XKSS, is clear in the ground-breaking body of the car.
As Jaguar took the decision to withdraw from racing in 1956 after new car rules were introduced they were left with a small number of cars they had no use for.
As RM Sotheby’s say: “Faced with a pool of soon-to-be obsolete cars, Jaguar took the decision to convert 18 chassis to dual-purpose road/race XKSS specification, complete with full-height windscreen, passenger side door, and rudimentary weather equipment.”
Amazingly, this XKSS remained unsold for some time after its conversion. Image courtesy RM Sotheby’s.
Fourteen of these cars were sold to America. One went to Hong Kong. The final one remained in the UK.
This example was used in some sort of testing before being sold, via an agent, to Phil Scragg, a textile machine magnate and hill climbing driver.
He returned it for full conversion to XKSS standards in 1958.
The car has been used competitively for much of its life, but was sold into retirement in 2017.
Sotheby’s describe the car as “arguably the most captivating and exclusive of all road-going Jaguars” and “one of the most significant and sought-after of all road cars”.
The car’s preservation, despite a long racing career, and excellent provenance make it exceptional.
The Jaguar XKSS is the top rated item going into RM Sotheby’s November 2 sale, but it is by no means the only highlight: A 1989 Ferrari F40 has a top estimate of £2 million as does a 2020 McLaren Senna GTR LM.
Probably the most valuable ever Jaguar has never been sold. The XJ13 was developed as a racing machine to prototype stage but never raced. The nearest to a value we have for it is a reported £7 million bid made for the only model in 1996. At the time that was around 3-three-times the value of a Ferari 250 GTO, now considered the world’s most valuable car selling for around $50 million.
