9 examples of the Classic Jaguar XKSS last sold in 1957 will be produced
Jaguar is producing nine brand-new classic Jaguar XKSS vehicles but you can’t buy one. Several buyers ponied up $1.5 million to buy a brand new version of one of Jaguar’s most iconic vehicles.
You are probably asking how is it that Jaguar can even produce a brand new ‘classic’ vehicle? Great question, I am glad you asked.
In 1956, Sir William Lyon the founder of Jaguar stopped racing his legendary D-Type racers. In a brilliant move, he converted the remaining D-Type racers into street cars called the Jaguar XKSS. These were essentially street legal race cars.
25 units were in various stages of construction in 1957 at the company’s historic Browns Lane Plant when disaster struck. A fire broke out destroying nine of the XKSS in various stages of assembly. Six years later, Jaguar Land Rover Classic will complete assembly of the remaining nine cars that were never finished. Jaguar Land Rover Classic is a the side of the business that oversees restorations and all issues pertaining to classic Jaguar and Land Rover models.
To complete the assembly of the historic vehicles, Jaguar relied on many of the original design documents and drawings of the XKSS. However, the drawings don’t tell you how to create the vehicles. To get this information, Jaguar Land Rover Classic had to borrow some copies of the original car and scan the entire vehicle to define the shape of the vehicle.
The upcoming classic Jaguar XKSS is not a new vehicle. Those parts that are not on-hand for the build will need to be reconstructed exactly as they would have been in the late ‘50s. In other words, Jaguar Land Rover Classic had to reverse engineer several important parts and systems to do everything correctly.
The level of attention to detail takes time to do correctly. As a result, each vehicle takes three months to complete.
When completed, the new classic Jaguar XKSS will be originals just like their siblings six decades earlier. They are brand new classics in every sense of the word.