One of the greatest cars ever built was the 1957 Jaguar XKSS, a Le Mans race car just barely modified for use on the street. Well, it was going to be, before nine of them burned in a fire. Now, Jaguar is going to right history’s wrong.
Yes, Jaguar is going to make a brand-new run of nine 1957 XKSSs in 2016. They’ll cost a million pounds and will not technically be street legal.
In 2014, they did basically the same thing with six ‘missing’ 1960s E-Type Lightweights, building old cars lost to history, built exactly to spec as the cars would have been in period.
The XKSS was the result of Jag having a couple extra Le Mans-winning D-Type sports racing cars in ‘57, and deciding to turn them into a road-legal specification for sale to rich cool people in the know. Jag made 25 cars and nine of them were destroyed in a fire at their factory. The XKSS never quite made the lasting imprint on the car world that it might have, had all the cars been made according to plan.
The loss of the XKSS is one of the great side-steps in sports car history, and it’s awesome that Jag is going back to correct it, in a way.
Via Hooniverse