Aficion|auto – A Charmed Life: The 1957 Jaguar XKSS Sports-Racer

[Music] thank you [Music] 1950s sports cars were the whole Market was pretty much dominated by sales in America and that's why you got cars like the 300 SL Roadster even the gull wing and then 356 speedsters you know a lot of these were driven by demands of people like Max Hoffman who's one of the big importers for sports cars into the states and then you've got Imports as well like Charles hornberg who's a big Jaguar importer so there's a huge demand for sports cars amongst particularly young men guys who've been GIS in in Europe and officers who then came back to America established businesses made money and then and then they wanted to have fun and they've been in Europe and they'd seen some of the incredible sports cars that that were produced before the war and their enthusiasm for a lighter weight more powerful nimbler sports cars was was born [Music] so the XK assist was not entirely by Design The Joker pulled out of racing at the end of 1956 and they were still selling production D types but towards the end of 56 the the order list was running out they had 25 unsold cars so they really needed to to shift some more cars and then the whole idea of actually creating a sports car for the road um came about and this is this is primarily aimed at the American market so 25 were were designated of course there's the famous factory fire in February 1957 um five cars were destroyed in the fire a further four were later dismantled because the production line have been sort of essentially damaged and so there were only 16 left so the skss and our Mantra SL is xkss 707 it's one of the most special ones in existence because of its originality it's a hugely unmolested car it's got its original engine parts of its original gearbox original rear axle vast majority of his of its body works professional the carb has spent a pretty Charmed Life went to the states raced a little bit of Laguna Seca was then owned by one guy for about sort of 15 years then came and joined Anthony bamford's collection in in 1975. he soldered on to Jeffrey Marsh another very well known English collector and then it went on to Kevin McCone who sort of is very well known in Jaguar circles in in the UK because he owned a c-type d-type and an xkss he looked after the car for years and then it joined the collection of another Jaguar sort of Die Hard Allen Lloyd who also had a lightly T-Type and a d-type and and and a whole lot so the cars had a really Charmed Life foreign [Music]

Channel: RM Sotheby's

Views: 15,795

Keywords: RM Sothebys, classic car, car auction, most valuable cars, cars at auction, collector car auction, auction house, sold at auction, jaguar xkss, classic jaguars, road legal race cars, jaguar dtype, European sports cars, best classic sports cars of all time

Id: jci_l0TXZyk

Length: 3min 8sec (188 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023