Jaguar XKSS Reborn? | Jay Leno's Garage

wow this drives just like the seat between cars [Music] really full something very very special today for us an explanation you might remember about seven eight years ago i was fortunate to drive the actual steve mcqueen xkss from 1957. if you don't know the story the story was jaguar had a bunch of d-type jags left over uh some of the rules changed they couldn't race them anymore they wanted to turn them into road cars so they had 25 cars and they turned it into the xkss there was a fire at browns lane where they were built i think only nine actually survived and the rest were destroyed and it became legend steve mcqueen bought one had the car modified to his standards tony nancy did the interior a few other things not terribly different but a few things wheels and whatnot it is probably the most valuable jaguar in the world worth probably about 30 million dollars something like that it might even be more somebody wanted to pay them for it uh one of the most fascinating cars to drive i love that car the difference between the xkss and this regular street jaguar night and day all kinds of power dry simple lubrication i mean all kinds of trick things okay that's the only one my friend dan moody has built this as a tribute to the steve mcqueen car but we don't really do replicas on this show very often once in a while maybe but when something this exceptional comes along this was built as a one-off it is close to original as you could get the body is all aluminum as per the original it's not fiberglass there's no you know chevrolet or ford parts it's it's it's all pretty much jaguar dan will explain it to us but if you look at it it couldn't be more visually correct i mean uh with the exception of the steering wheel on the left-hand side because it's on the right on the other on the original car so it can be driven here uh he built this as i said as a one-off well let's bring dan in dan come on in it's dan mooney from classic jaguar out of austin texas he's a guy he turned his hobby into a job and one at your job you built your hobby so yeah very cool so tell us about how how long does this take first of all well the car took about two years to build from start to finish and it really took about 50 years in the planning because i started looking at the steve mcqueen car and pictures of steve mcqueen with his car literally back in the 60s and i became obsessed with that car and always loved steve mcqueen and then um but steve mcqueen didn't own it in the 60s well he did actually he he got the car in 58. oh that's right richard freshman bought it after him that's right i saw richard with this car would show up at the rock store which is sort of the hangout the cars and coffee kind of place before that term was popular where all the bikers would go and i would see it there every week and i remember at the time they were asking like a half a million dollars that's ridiculous for a car half a million dollars but that's right he got it after steve and then it went to the museum yeah richard bought the car from the estate right in i think 1984 and i think he paid 148 000 for it that really would be not a million dollars but pretty close it was a lot of money back in there you forgot how much i mean you could buy 911s for 3 500 right you know secondhand so that was that was a lot a lot of money well and he sent the car to england to get restored because it hadn't been driven for four or five years because of course uh steve mcqueen passed away in 1980 right and um i actually about 25 years ago i was able to buy an original piston and one of the knock-offs from the original mcqueen car that got kind of recycled during that restoration yeah i always wonder about that i remember my wife is a huge dickens fan and i bought charles dickens inkwell right and i paid like a crazy amount of money as a gift and i how do i know it's an inkwell how do i know it's charles dickens i know so you have to sort of go with that uh yeah well the piston is in a box that's labeled by the company that i know did the restoration in 1985. so i'm fairly confident but it might be a another charles dickens inquiry yeah the situation but i i i think it is his equal you know it's nice to think it yeah think positively but i've had that on my desk or near my desk for for 25 years and i've always known that at some point i was going to build something like this and and here it is now the only difference is the original car had uh a dry sump lubrication correct and the engine was tilted off to the side this is tilted off to the side as well it is it's tilted over about eight degrees really for bonnet clearance right that's that's the only reason it's tilted and the original motor put out about what 250 horsepower about 250 and about 250 foot-pounds right and this probably puts out more than that with modern it puts out 350 horsepower and 400 foot pounds of torque wow okay and the only other difference is you move the steering wheel to the left yes and you put five speed it's got a modern five-speed in it uh it's an rs cosworth-based five-speed uh so it's a strong gearbox nice shifting gearbox i'm not really sure this car needs a five-speed to be honest because it's not a high-speed cruising car right it's a very fast car from you know from zero to however brave you're feeling but you're not going to sit on a freeway doing 100 miles an hour and i doubt anyway but 100 miles an hour is doesn't seem i mean it's more than capable it's probably if the original was capable of doing 160 170 something like that it has to be quicker than that i mean i had the steve mcqueen car at 100 and i felt like boy there's a lot more here i mean oh for sure yeah it was the most modern vintage car i had ever driven up to that point i mean it felt like you could sell this today yes it would be just as exciting it could more than keep up with modern traffic and modern cars just because of the light weight i mean whereas mclaren and all these other cars are considered lightweight at 3 200 pounds 3 100 pounds this is almost less than 2 000 what 21 maybe it is about 2100 pounds and if you took the spare wheel out and actually 2100 pounds with fluids right so it's probably a sub 2 000 pound car yeah i mean that's that's pretty amazing that's pretty amazing it's light yeah i mean you would have zero to 60 in about what four seconds i think a little less than that probably yeah well now with this one but i mean this thing oh the original one would have been about five yeah yeah the thing that made that steve made made it different was obviously the tony nancy interior right for those that don't know tony nancy was uh one of those west coast hot rodders there was a time during the 50s and 60s but those guys are so celebrated ed roth did all the models for revell and amt and all that kind of stuff and and tony nancy did the interiors junior house of colored did the wild metal flakes and all that kind of paint that they it was very popular back in the day and those guys made the transition from hot rods to to monitors my gold wing over there that i have that has a tony nancy interior that's why i never changed it it's been a racing car its whole life so it's just black leather interior but the fact that he did it that made it sort of i like all of the extra pleats he put in though and right right you know it's definitely custom it's it's different from any other xkss or d-type interior and it's really a tiny car i mean this car is really small people don't realize how small it is until they actually try to get in it even minis now are maxis by me huge when you look at a real mini people oh my god it looks like a toy you gotta have one in each shoe you know but now the mini has four doors and it's like americans they started out small now they're big fat banks you know whereas this this is just you know i i have a thing for cars where all four wheels are the same size i don't know why the miura is like that i have an early mirror uh bugatti i just like the era where you could drive a car to the racetrack win the race and then drive the car home with the trophy in the seat next year this would definitely be one of those this would be because these did start out as d-types and what changed why couldn't they race anymore i think it was an engine regulation where you know the the three liters became the maximum engine size right and the d-types were obviously three and a half liters right so they were dead in the water really in 1957. so they had these 25 or so left over and sir william lyons decided to make the xks primarily for the u.s market actually right right and um well sure he had seen what max hoffman did with the gullwing right uh and and and and the bmw 507 and all those others because that was really the golden age back back in the day people think it's the 60s with the muscle cars but the 50s you had all these high performance cars ferrari maserati all coming to rape absolutely racing against max bulchelski with his hot rod with a 401 viewer i mean it was really a great a great great time uh and it's such a strikingly beautiful car was this designed by it was designed in-house at jaguar yes i mean it's just a voluptuous shape it really looks contemporary i i don't think there's a better looking car this and the and certainly the xke that came along as well and you can see similarities between this and the xke that followed just four years later yeah really something like can we uh let's let's open the hood and show them what we have under here sure so under the hood i have not or bonnet i would say i have not tried to replicate exactly the uh the mcqueen car right um just for practical reasons really i've tried as i said it's got a wet sump so for ease of maintenance as much as anything else and what brakes are you using i've got vented wilwoods on the front okay and i've got slightly larger brakes on the back one big difference between this car and the original cars is this has e-type independent rear suspension right we had to really reduce the spring pressure because the car so light compared to an e-type but it's ostensibly the same suspension throughout as an e-type and really the car is running on e-type mechanical drivetrain yeah i should probably clear up when i say it it's an exact cop visually it's exactly because obviously you've changed suspension and done things to make it a bit more uh reliable i wanted i wanted it to be one of those you know you see the car and a double take and right wow i know what that is and but really it's it's an e-type under the skin and it features all of our performance and reliability upgrades that we've developed over the years now you are not manufacturing these this is just a car you built this is a one of one uh i'm only building one tribute to the steve mcqueen car and this is it yeah um it was very much a labor of love and uh kind of a bucket list item for me to be right right no really really just just beautiful thank you just amazing and it's almost impractical it's hot it's noisy uh these now these windows you have to literally unbolt them don't you you have to unscrew them to take them off and mcqueen never used these mcqueen took these off his car right and if you see all of those iconic photographs of him you know with a on a film set with a horse tied to the car and stuff these aren't on right right and he didn't have the luggage rack either in fact he didn't have this either yeah i'm surprised you put the luggage rack on i put it on because the car in the museum at the peter center's got the luggage rack and it's got the side windows right right right and and they were so helpful in getting some of the details right i wanted to try and make it look as you know close to the way the car looks today in the museum as i could now was this an aftermarket item but did you have to hand make this this is all hand fabricated oh it does okay so it's not a standard like xke oh no you could put it on there okay no this is uh a lot a lot of what you see here is all fabricated the body is obviously a monocoque an aluminum monocoque it's held together with almost 2 000 rivets right and some of the rivets you can still see because we haven't hidden them they're exposed right but there's another 1500 or more rivets under the skin holding this car together that have just been ground flat now in england the passenger's feet would get roasted but in this one it's the drivers drivers yeah we actually put some heat insulation under the car because when i first started driving this car it was it was august in austin yeah and uh it was unbearable it was so hot yeah but actually it works quite well now the the heat reflective stuff that we've got underneath things you've got the gas tank mid engines yes so this sits behind the seats the gas tank how many gallon tank is that well that's this is a small tank i've got 12 gallon tank here the original would have had a 36 gallon fuel cell that's 36. yeah um and that was because it was a leftover from the d-type racing day so if you've got 12 gallons you can probably go 100 miles well about that yes i'll bet it's getting about 10 miles per gallon the way i've got it yeah yeah yeah that's funny 36 gallon boy that's a big i know it's huge yeah that's it and they didn't have fuel cells back in the day right well actually they did they were rudimentary but they did have fuel cells it actually had twin fuel cells back in the day and the wheels are polished that's steve as well that's a steve mcqueen touch he didn't like the the stove enameled or powder coated finish of the originals right now the holes drilled in the wheels that's was that factory yes so all of that was factory it was just the polishing that he did right and these tires actually one of your guys was talking about these tires earlier on uh michelin pilot is a fantastic tire right for anybody who's got a 16-inch narrow wheel on their car xk 140 150 that type of thing this is a wonderful tire because it looks like it's been made to look like i know and it's fine i wish i had known about this tire because when i did my uh my cunningham uh we just went to a 15 inch wheel because tires were available and they touched they touch the fenders on turns i can feel them right right yeah i wish i had those 16. well these pilates are great yeah very nice what else let's let's come around the back and it has well it doesn't really have a trunk at all does it no it's got a spare wheel in here there's a spare wheel um and some tools and that's about it really yeah you can't really so if you're going on a trip you bring the harley you know but it's nice that you actually have a spare i don't get this thing of no spare tire anymore in the old days you get a flat you jack it up you fix it you're on the road maybe 20 minutes and you go now you're there all day waiting for flatbed and tires are so unique to vehicles now oh you know try and find a tire for a tesla you're gonna you're gonna wait two or three days for sure yeah very nicely done yeah cool and are these the the standard they're actually modified xk-150 lights okay they look very similar to the original d-type lights but that's is that what they did back in the day yeah yeah so they look very very similar to the original d-type lights and standard jaguar dashboard yeah and actually the dashboard is interesting because we put a huge amount of effort into trying to make it look as much like the mcqueen car as we could right because it was slightly customized by mcqueen by by tony nancy and um we've got the the von dutch glove box door right inside here we just for a bit of fun we've got steve mcqueen's cigarettes in there the advice we're always seeing 1960 viceroys and we've got his fold up purcell sunglasses that steve was famous for wearing was it lung cancer yes unfortunately yes well he was you know steve was on an asbestos ship during the i think korean war and he didn't get it from the smoking but i'm sure that estimated the situation but uh yeah yeah he was uh he was an interesting guy you know he would hang out at bud shop but eakins had a triumph motorcycle shop and steve would come around and you know near the end he he was like a hoarder guy just he's just like me and didn't shave and just it was all his cars and motorcycles he had to uh up at santa paula airport yeah yeah he had a i guess a shop up there uh just filled with all kinds of indian motorcycles i mean he really was just became just a hardcore crazy old but you know like you know these lady crazy cat ladies he was like a crazy car and motorcycle guy yeah you know funny enough i just ordered um a watch that you can now buy yeah that's been made from pieces from the uh the triumph that he did the great escape jump how many watches can they make oh gosh i don't know but it's from clutch discs and connecting rods and you know literally just ordered that it's very funny when you watch this great escape he's in a german prison camp why the germans would be driving a triumph it doesn't make any sense yeah yeah but that was bud that did the jumping i know you know but also did uh uh buddhican's a great stunt man he when you see bullet remember the guy in the motorcycle they come to the gas station the guy throws the bike down and slides along that's bud yeah he just put on a jack and i go out and do that side don't fall off the motor okay slides off and gets up you know yeah this is actually an original d-type speedo in there oh okay that we managed to find and we restored that went to 180 i went well originally those d-types would have done so and the engine you've gone through it is is it 4.2 liters well it started life as a 4.2 e-type and we've stroked it out um to 4.7 oh wow so it's got a lot of a lot of torque is that about the limit of that motor 4.7 no we've actually gone a little bit bigger but um you know we've done five liter six cylinder jaguar engines now i i maybe it's a rumor i was always told the 3.8 or was it the 3-4 was the nicest revving one i think the 3-4 and the 3-8 are both really smooth revving right right the 4-2 is it's still smooth everything's relative but certainly the 3-4 and the three eight they rev quicker yes well it's just a beautiful beautiful job i could see thank you i'm surprised you could even do it in two years i mean uh pretty amazing can we bring it next door and put up and show people what it looks like for sure yeah absolutely put it on on the left well we thought it would fit on the sterile coney lift it didn't because i didn't want to risk it uh didn't quite get under there because of the header same thing here so well you have photos right let's take a look sure here's some photos of the build and uh also what it looks like underneath come on let's take it for a ride all right let's do it not a lot of room in this car all right now you feel like you're driving line up the red dots the clutch is a good workout huh it's pretty strong oh yeah [Music] wow very smooth now you got to drive the actual mcqueen car correct i did a couple of years ago they invited me to drive it and it was just the thrill of a lifetime for me it really was drove it off up into the canyons now why did you think why did you how did you get that chance to drive it well funny enough i won an auction i'll bring a trailer for a ride along and then when i got to the museum it turned out that dana williams and i knew each other we we'd actually met at your garage right um and dana said hey you know as much about this car as i do why don't you drive it right and yeah i don't think he finished the sentence before i was sitting in the driver's seat before he changed his mind for this car just a little bit cool exactly so the heat actually works as an advantage i mean this truly is one of the great engines you know i i never really noticed the difference between the maserati six and the and the uh aston martin six and this is always the poor relation to those and yet i think they get more power out of them superb and they made it last all the way from 48 to i know 87 or 88 or whatever it was well they call this a small block chevy of of europe because because it was so it was used in so many applications wow this drive just like the steeper queen car i think what people don't realize about the car is first of all how small it is right and and also they're really nimble very light steering you know very agile i think it's fair to say this is about the same size as a miata probably is yeah pretty close in fact honestly if you parked it next to a miata i think the miata would probably be quite a bit bigger yeah it's funny when you see pictures of these cars in period or even in the magazines they're always isolated so you get no sense of the size right yeah i mean it's really petite it is i just absolutely love it it's it's really not much is it about the same size the 356 porsche yeah it might be the wheelbase on this is i think it's like 90 and a half inches versus about 96 on a knee type right which is already quite a small car [Music] but instant throttle response and it's not even warmed up yet no exactly and we could get quite a bit more power out of it actually but because of the engine tilted over right i've had to do the headers kind of custom and the front two right primaries are not equal length to the other four [Music] but honestly i mean it doesn't need any more power it's already perhaps more too powerful for the wheels and tires really [Music] my boy this this windshield is right here right there that's your airbag oh you're the airbag it's funny i haven't driven in this car as as a passenger oh is that right now this is my turn signal here yes and if you want to go left you lean it left exactly it'll stay on for 12 seconds if you need it to come on again you know right okay i think it's funny that there's no backlit for the gauges you know you just got this one sort of flashlight up here that points down at the at the speedo but it's got all of my reliability upgrades in it as well so runs cool you know i wouldn't hesitate to drive the car quite a long distance except for the you know the chiropractor visit afterwards right what i love is how free breathing it is yeah it really is especially as i've stroked into 470 but yeah that's really slowed down its uh you know free revving nature at all oh no it doesn't shut off after 12 seconds and if you wanted to shut off just move it again [Music] and it will shut off after 12 flashes i had to put much softer springs in the back than the knee type normally an e type would have 275 pound springs you know four of them this has got a 130 pound springs now were the guys at the peterson helpful that let you take measurements and everything they were fantastic in fact i really want to give bruce batshu the mechanic over at the peterson and dana williamson but especially bruce a shout out because he would measure things for me i asked him loads of questions and he was literally putting a pair of calipers on the holes on the steering wheel so we knew how far to space out the holes and how big to make the holes they couldn't have been more helpful throughout the project you know it's so funny it almost feels like power steering it's so light very light yeah and very direct and not too many rattles no no rattles at all actually quite nice in fairness the uh the suspension on this you know is is so much so advanced you know compared to the suspension that's on the original car obviously it was a live axle at the back of the original car [Music] i forgot how far the pedal goes down really full well this is what a sports car should be most modern cars are boring up to 80 miles an hour they're you know they're so isolated so smooth whereas this gives you the raw visceral feel of a proper car [Music] oh nowhere near redline i mean crazy all kinds of torque and the the red line on this is about 5800 something like that [Music] i was expecting to be quite a bit more raucous and noisy it's really not as it's quite civilized well we put a lot of effort into trying to eliminate all the rattles and squeaks and i wanted it to feel like a you know a factory-built car you mean you didn't want to feel like a factory-built car i think steve mcqueen would have appreciated the extra yeah 150 football to talk right he would have gone into a lot more trouble i think than he did well danny did an incredible job just just a work of art it really is thank you yeah beautifully done you know i always say if if you're restoring a car ride or building it right you're going to lose money on it because nobody can afford to put the amount of time and effort that someone who really appreciates these things does and that's what you've done here so well thanks very much jay appreciate it beautiful job and thanks for the opportunity having driven them both i think i prefer this over the steve mcqueen it's a bit quicker a bit quicker yeah [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 273,858

Keywords: Steve McQueen, Jaguar, XKSS, Dan Mooney, Team CJ, replica, replicar, car porn, car guy, car enthusiast, classic cars, rare cars, race cars, English cars, British cars, D-type, William Lyons

Id: WB6yJ-21oyo

Length: 28min 16sec (1696 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 10 2022