There are few modern sports cars around which legends gather more thickly than the Jaguar XKSS. Following the company?s withdrawal from racing after the 1956 season, a number of both completed and incomplete D-Types remained in factory stock and unsold. The decision was made to convert these cars to road-going specification, for sale to the wanting American market. Bodywork was modified with the removal of the divider between the seats and the large tail fin, as well as the addition of a passenger door, a full-width windshield with chromed frame, side screens in both driver and passenger doors, chromed bumperettes, and a simple folding top. Otherwise the XKSS was a D-Type, barely, slightly tamed?a wolf in another wolf?s clothing.

It was a rare occasion when a race car with only a few minor changes was then resold as a road car, and perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the people who bought an XKSS were sportsmen who wound up racing them anyway. Dick Thompson, the famed ?Flying Dentist,? comes to mind. Yet not many had the chance to make such a dream their reality, regardless of their wealth and stature. After only sixteen D-Types had been completed to XKSS specification, the remaining nine chassis were destroyed in a fire that swept through Jaguar?s Browns Lane factory. Since the intention had been only to build the model until the remaining D-Type stock was used up, the fire meant that the XKSS came to an end.
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The survivors of the sixteen 1957...