from http://www.jaguar.co.uk/uk/en/company/magazine/jaguarmagazine.htm

"Mulholland Drive snakes a 25-mile path between Hollywood and the Pacific Ocean just north of Malibu. It’s an asphalt roller-coaster that dips and dives across the San Bernardino hills behind the City of Angels.

Steve McQueen always took Mulholland, testing his skills through the twists and turns; pushing his car to the limit. The cops could usually hear him coming - the angry bark of a thinly masked race-car engine reverberating off the canyon walls.

McQueen loved his XKSS. He bought it in 1958 after his TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive put cash in his pocket. He’d seen the white Jag with cherry red upholstery around the studio car parks and persuaded its owner, TV personality Bill Leyden, to part with it. Within days, he’d had the car resprayed in his favourite British Racing green, had the Dunlop racing wheels polished to a mirror-like sheen, and the interior re-trimmed in rich black leather.

“I loved that Jag, but I drove it too fast,” McQueen told journalist William Nolan at the time. He collected so many speeding tickets in his first year, he came close to having his licence suspended twice.

He loved his XKSS for its purity and speed. Here was a thinly disguised, road-legal race car; a road-going version of the three-times Le Mans-winning Jaguar D-type. Even by today’s standards, the SS was blisteringly quick. Road & Track magazine recorded a 0-to-60 mph time of 4.7 seconds. The 100mph came up in 12.1 seconds, with top speed quoted as a then-unthinkable 146 mph.

The XKSS was launched in January 1957. At the time, Jaguar was well into production of the D-type race car. But when the company announced its temporary retirement from high-profile motorsport, demand for the ‘D’ suddenly dried-up. Jaguar’s solution was to convert the remaining cars to road-going specification.

It was a relatively simple task to turn race car into road car. The D-type’s trademark centre spine between the two seats was removed, and a second door fitted for the passenger. A full-width windscreen was designed, with plenty of wrap-around to keep the car’s aerodynamics, and small sidescreens attached to the doors.

To protect against the elements, a canvas hood was developed. But because Jaguar engineers didn’t want expensive changes to the bodywork, they left the fuel filler in place behind the driver on the rear deck. Every time you wanted to fill-up, the top had to be dropped.

The prototype XKSS was quickly shipped to the U.S. for the 1957 New York Auto Show where it was a hit. Even with a £2,464 price tag the car had orders for 25 cars in the books. A batch of five D-types was immediately pulled out of storage and sent to the service department at Jaguar’s Browns Lane factory for conversion.

The cars were still there on the night of February 12 when fire broke out in the main assembly line building and spread to the service department. Almost 300 cars were turned to scrap, including the five D-types, and all the special tooling and wooden ‘bucks’ needed to form the D-type’s curvaceous body.

It was the end of the XKSS project. Of the planned initial run of 21 cars, only 16 had been built. Of these, 12 ended up being shipped to the U.S., two to Canada, one to Hong Kong. Only one stayed in the U.K. though later on, a couple of D-types were converted to XKSS specification.

So what happened to McQueen’s XKSS? In the early ‘70s, the actor was big into circuit racing, but felt his Jaguar too rare to risk. He sold it to casino owner Bill Harrah to join his 1,400-car collection in Reno, Nevada, but only on condition the car was never driven, or sold, and that McQueen could buy it back at the original price.

Following Harrah’s death, McQueen asked for the car back under the original agreement, but the new management refused to co-operate. Only after a lengthy legal battle did he reclaim the Jaguar, which kept until his death in 1980, willing it to his children, Chad and Terry. In November 1984, the car was auctioned off at the Imperial Palace Hotel in Las Vegas for just $150,000, and bought by McQueen’s friend, Richard Freshman who had the car refurbished by Jaguar experts, Lynx Engineering in England.

“I know I was probably crazy to sell it,” Chad McQueen told us. “But when my dad died, he had 133 motor bikes and 35 cars. With the inheritance tax laws at the time, we knew we were going to have a big hit. So the XKSS had to go.”

These days, McQueen’s XKSS is owned by Margie and Robert Petersen, founders of the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles.

As for the $150,000 price paid by Richard Freshman back in ‘84, it was a steal. Today, any one of the 16 original XKSS cars will fetch over $1 million. But for those lucky enough to own one of the 16 original XKSS’s the thrill of simply driving these machines is worth far more than $1 million. It’s priceless."

-- Edited by Lewis at 08:52, 2005-04-05

The XK-SS is only slightly modified compared to the race winning D-Type, mainly for safety (bumpers) and comfort reasons. Only 16 examples were finished when the Conventry based Jaguar was destroyed by a big fire in 1957. The moulds were destroyed with the factory and this effectively meant the end of the XK-SS production. All but two of the 16 cars built found their way to North American owners (12 USA and 2 Canada).

Steve MQueen in his 1957 Jaguar XKSS on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, 1962.

This 1957 Jaguar XKSS sold for $1,100,000 at the 2003 Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale, Arizona.

-- Edited by Lewis at 16:11, 2005-04-03

Another XKSS