Jaguar so rare it roared up £2m in a year
One of 16 XKSS models in world goes on show at Mayfair restorers
IT IS described as “the coolest car in the world”, shooting up in value even faster than the mansions that surround it in the heart of Mayfair.
A rare Jaguar XKSS — one of 16 surviving examples — has been given pride of place in the newly opened Mount Street showroom of specialist restorers JD Classics near the Connaught hotel.
Its value — estimated at $17 million, or £11.5 million — has risen 20 per cent over the past year, adding almost £2 million to its price tag.
The prime central London property market, by contrast, has gone up at a relatively modest pace of around 5 per cent over the same period.
The 3.4 litre engined car’s value was enhanced last summer when it won a “best in class” in the postwar sports category at the Quail Lodge competition in Pebble Beach, California.
But Anthony Wenyon, chief executive of Essex-based JD Classics, said the ever-increasing value — as well as the company’s emotional attachment to the most expensive British-made road car in the world — made it hard to sell.
“The last time we did get an offer there was a little tear in the eye of Derek Hood (the company’s owner),” he added.
The XKSS, made in Coventry in 1957, has spent much of its life rusting in a Cuban pound after an accident during a supercar race on the island. It was later held by the Castro regime. JD Classics bought the Jaguar in 2010 and spent four years restoring it.
The cars, said to be capable of a top speed of 180 mph, were a road-adapted version of the racing D-Type Jaguar. Owners have included Steve McQueen and Ralph Lauren. Just 16 were finished before a fire broke out at the plant in 1957, destroying the last nine D-Types waiting to be converted.