1957 Jaguar XKSS should fetch £14 million at auction - and that's a bargain

1957 Jaguar XKSS should fetch £14 million at auction (Photo Gooding & Co)

A 1957 Jaguar XKSS – one of just 16 built – is the first XKSS heading for auction in a decade and is expected to hit £14 million. Which makes it a real bargain.

The Jaguar XKSS has been back in the news recently because Jaguar has decided to build the ‘missing’ nine XKSS’ which never got finished because they got burnt to a crisp.

But this news is about an original 1957 Jaguar XKSS heading for auction with Gooding and Co and expected to fetch as much as £14 million. Yes, an old Jag is worth £14 million. And it’s an absolute bargain.

Not only is the Jaguar XKSS probably the best looking classic car in existence, it’s also one of the rarest, and is a genuine race car for the road to boot. As the D-Type, it won Le Mans three times.

Hastily cobbled together by Jaguar from the D-Type after it became uncompetitive, just 16 of the remaining 25 D-Type chassis were turned in to road cars before fire hit Browns Land and wiped out the rest, with Jaguar doing not much more to the racing D-Type than give it a hood, a bit of a windscreen, token lights and doors before putting it on the road as the XKSS.

But does all that makes the Jaguar XKSS worth £14 million? Well, what else could you get for that sort of money?

In the classic car world, the king of the classics is the Ferrari 250 GTO. But you’d struggle to buy half a 250 GTO for the money. And the XKSS is twice as rare and oh so much better looking.

Or you could invest in Apple and be one of the cool guys. £14 million should get you about 0.0025% we reckon. Which would be very exciting.

You could always splash out on a sports star, with £14 million buying you Gareth Bale’s left arm and half a leg, or just about manage a Learjet 85 – although you’d have nothing left to run it.

No, there’s no question. A £14 million Jaguar XKSS is a bargain and clearly the only way anyone sensible would choose to spend their money. Just like Steve McQueen did.

The XKSS is so good and so beguiling that Steve McQueen owned his twice. And still had it when he died.

The Gooding and Co auction featuring the first Jaguar XKSS to cross the blocks in a decade is on 10 March 2017 at Amelia Island.